
Copyright }J°. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Back to Bethlehem 



MODERN PROBLEMS IN THE LIGHT 
OF THE OLD FAITH 



JOHN H. WILLEY, Ph.D. 



The Holiest among the mighty, and the Mightiest among the holy, 

lifted with his pierced hands empires off their hinges, 

and still governs the ages 

— Jean Paul Richter 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 

CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



A CI D S:2 



LSBRARY of OONGRESS 
Two Copies KeceivtMS 

APR 6 1905 
Gopyngni tniry 

CLMSS ^ XXc. Pun 

COPY B. 






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Copyright, 1905, by 
EATON & MAINS. 



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TO 

MY WIFE 



CONTENTS 



PAGB 

Prologue 5 

The Survival of the Fittest 11 

Environment ^^ 

The Unity of the Race 55 

The Development of the Race 79 

Arrested Development — Militarism loi 

The Philanthropy of God 127 

The Service of God 153 

The Law of Service 177 

The Gospel of a Person 197 

Jesus and the New Age 219 

The Evolution of the Book 239 

Epilogue 267 



PROLOGUE 



All roads lead to Bethlehem. More and 
more as the years pass and our intellectual 
horizon broadens must Jesus of Bethlehem be 
reckoned with. The scientist with his lenses, 
the critic with his particles, the antiquarian 
with his pick, must account for him. This 
gigantic shadow falls across every study table ; 
this immense personality stands at the crucible 
in every laboratory. 

There are two ways of reaching the top of 
Mount Washington. You may start from 
Crawford's Notch; mile after mile you may 
struggle over rock and yawning chasm, until, 
tired and torn, you reach at last the rest and 
outlook at the summit. Or you may take the 
little car at Fabyan's, and, without effort or 
risk, in a very short time you may be looking 
down upon the far-away world. So there are 
men who are eagerly seeking the great expla- 
nation of the world's good. They look for it 
in science; they interrogate the long shelves 



6 Prologue 

of the world's libraries; they grope for foot- 
prints in the fields and mountains; they listen 
with strained ears for voices in the shout of 
the thunder or the song of the jubilant sea 
After infinite struggle and disappointment 
they find a dim shadow, a "power that makes 
for righteousness," a "promise and potency of 
all terrestrial life." And at once they are 
ready to say, "These be thy gods, O Israel, 
which have brought thee up out of the begin- 
nings and the ignoble." 

But there is a shorter route to the mountain 
summit, a surer way to the explanation. In 
the chapters that follow we have sought to 
consider some of the problems of the modern 
world, and have noted the solution as sug- 
gested by theorists or as wrought out by the 
slow process of time. Everywhere have we 
found Him of whom Moses and the prophets 
did write. "Whatsoever things are true, what- 
soever things are honest, whatsoever things 
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- 
ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are 
of good report," we may look for their spring 
and inspiration in Bethlehem. "If there be 
any virtue, and if there be any praise," it is of 
Jesus Christ. His friends have been the 
friends of reform ; his followers have given the 



Prologue 7 

upward look to history. Take any point of 
departure, go in any direction, pass through 
the ranks of the world's heroes, or the 
world's scholars, or the world's philanthro- 
pists — those who have enlarged life, who have 
given a diviner meaning to progress and a 
sweeter meaning to service — and, sooner or 
later, you come face to face with the living, 
loving Christ. He is not only the Author of 
our faith, but the Author of our civilization. 
He not only saves us from sin and littleness 
and atrophy, but he saves us to the largest, 
fullest life; not only in the Old Testament 
sense of elimination, but in the New Testa- 
ment sense of reconstruction and evolution. 

"And so the Word had breath and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
More strong than all poetic thought; 

"Which he may read that binds the sheaf, 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave, 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave 
In roaring round the coral reef." 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 



Back to Bethlehem 



The Survival of the Fittest 

The first prophecy of the Old Testament 
is a declaration of war. It is a message from 
the Commander in Chief that his flag will soon 
be afield. According to the traditional set- 
ting, it was spoken amid the kind foliage of 
a virgin world. It was heard by a man and 
a woman whose range was narrow and whose 
ideas were primitive, but it contains the march- 
ing orders of the ages. It maps out the cam- 
paigns of all the future. The world was to 
be a scene of struggle. This is the burden of 
this weird old-time tocsin. Life had been 
ideal. The sun had risen upon the Golden Age. 
There was no serpent Ladon in the Garden of 
the Hesperides. The three maidens from 
Jotunheim who brought dissension and ruin 
had not yet entered Asgard, the sunny land 



i2 Back to Bethlehem 

"midway between the regions of frost and 
ice. 

But a change was coming. There was to be 
a mustering of forces, and the next move in 
the history of the race was to be a skirmish 
for position. The race, or what there was of 
it, had been a child. It had thought as a child, 
and understood as a child, but the prohibition 
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil 
meant that it was on the threshold of manhood 
and must henceforth live the life of a man. 
The story of Eden is the story of a man, the 
story of men. Hegel claims that "the Fall 
is the eternal Mythus of Man — in fact, the very 
transition by which he becomes Man"; first 
the innocence and tranquillity of instinct, then 
the self-consciousness and unrest of reason. 
The man and the woman dressed and kept the 
garden, and gave names to the beasts of the 
field; they were naked and unashamed. But 
the new sensations of curiosity and desire de- 
stroyed the animal content. It was the har- 
mony of childhood breaking up in the discords 
of manhood. It was the knowledge of good 
and evil by which man became as God. This 
is the story of life. Donatello, the frolicsome 
spirit who gambols through the earlier chap- 
ters of the Marble Faun, comes one day into 



The Survival of the Fittest 13 

contact with matters of awful moment. 
Prompted by the glance of a strong-willed 
woman, he takes the life of a human being. 
Says Hawthorne, ''His form had dilated. It 
had kindled him into a man. The simple and 
joyous creature whom he had hitherto known 
was now gone forever." In one supreme mo- 
ment he had crossed the bar at the mouth 
of the harbor and had been smitten by the sea 
blast. He had become a man and had entered 
upon man's inheritance of struggle and ex- 
tremity. He had eaten of the forbidden fruit 
and had been driven forth from the paradise 
of instinct and childish simplicity. The world 
was all before him, but it was a world in 
which henceforth his bread was to be eaten 
by the sweat of his brow. This same lesson 
is learned by Parsifal in the garden of tempta- 
tion where the kiss of Kundry is the fruit from 
the tree of knowledge. Bonaventura, shy, sel- 
fish, impulsive, passionate, delivers his rival to 
the conscript officers, and then goes into 
travail. His "ora-a-a" of exultation is followed 
by bitter days and sleepless nights, out of 
which comes a beautiful unselfishness which 
makes his life and character an inspiration 
and an ideal. So over and over again is told 
in real life and in romance the splendid old 



14 Back to Bethlehem 

story of the world's beginning — how out of 
the knowledge of good and evil is born soul- 
consciousness, the arrival of selfhood ; yea, the 
death of innocence, threatened by the powers 
of good ; and the god-knowledge of right and 
wrong promised by the powers of evil, who 
told a mighty truth in the midst of a mighty 
lie. 

Even if we are not ready to accept all 
that Evolution may seek to teach us, at the 
same time we are not deaf to all of its data. 
It depends largely upon the spirit and phrase- 
ology of the teacher. Mr. Charles Darwin 
came upon the platform with his Descent of 
Man, and there was a gathering of the clans 
and the cry of "no quarter" was heard all 
along the line. There was an implied reflec- 
tion upon the race in the very title of the book. 
There was a suggestion of down-grade, and 
the treatise was prejudged and its conclusions 
outlawed before the pages were dry. We are 
more tolerant with Henry Drummond. He 
may bring us along the same path. He may 
look for our beginnings in the same "her- 
maphrodite ascidian." But he has been shrewd 
enough to call the process of change The 
Ascent of Man, and lo, we are ready to place 
his book in our liturgy and canonize its au- 



The Survival of the Fittest 15 

thor. There is nothing repulsive nor humili- 
ating in the thought that our bodies are the 
result of growth ; that the forms we possess, 
the dignity and grace of our physical human- 
ity, are the climax of ages of planning and of 
experiment and of development; that even as 
the human embryo passes through the forms 
of the lower animals, borrowing from each 
some characteristic and carrying it on to the 
next stage, until in the end it has become a 
combination of all the best things below it; 
so the race has struggled on and up by a long 
and tedious way, until at last the human body 
is a microcosm, a sodality of all created ex- 
cellence, a part of all it has met and of all 
it has been as it journeyed toward the moun- 
tain top. All this we leave with the scientist, 
assured of our mental tranquillity however 
the matter is settled. 

But it is at this stage that the struggle 
is transferred to a new plane and new factors 
are to be considered. The body has come into 
its kingdom. It has reached the mountain 
peak. But there are peaks beyond peaks. The 
summit of the physical is only the base of the 
spiritual. No sooner has the body reached its 
perihelion than a new agent appears, a new 
struggle begins, a new Richmond is in the field. 



i6 Back to Bethlehem 

The steed of instinct which has ranged at will 
is to have a strong rider. The battle royal 
is transferred from the realm of matter to the 
realm of spirit. The field of operations has 
been objective, now it is to become subjective. 
The assault and schism have been from influ- 
ences without, now these are to come from 
influences within. We are complete animals. 
The beasts that roam the woods or browze 
in the fields or dig in the earth are kindred 
of the flesh with the animal we call man, even 
though he has learned to dress and undress 
himself and eat his food when cooked. If we 
were only animal we would have a much easier 
time of it. There is perfect content for those 
beings only who are either purely animal or 
purely spiritual. Only at the summit and at 
the base of creation is there peace. Take away 
all the animal from man and his life would 
become tranquil, the tranquillity of the lake at 
the mountain summit, above the dust of the 
lowlands and the tides of the sea. Take away 
all the spiritual from man and he will become 
tranquil, the tranquillity of the stagnant pool 
in the mountain cavern shielded from the 
gleam and stir of the day. But so long as 
these two warring elements meet in the same 
personality, so long will there be struggle and 



The Survival of the Fittest 17 

travail until one or the other has surrendered 
and wears its rival's chains and does its 
rival's bidding. 

There is a right and there is a wrong always 
encamped over against it, sending out its 
Goliath armed with coat of mail and thunder- 
ing his defiance. There is a nobler nature in 
man, ''the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the 
love of love" ; a something that finds God and 
seeks to be like him. It is this which has made 
heroes. It has founded religions. It has sung 
psalms at the stake. It came from heaven 
and it knows the way back, and its face is 
turned in that direction. But it is not a cleared 
path in which it treads. The way lies through 
the enemy's country. There is stratagem, and 
ambush, and open battle. Every inch of the 
road must be contested. Dr. Jekyll always has 
his Edward Hyde ; Cicero has his Cataline ; 
William the Silent his Count Egmont; even 
Jesus had a Judas making a part of his en- 
vironment and complicating the problem of 
life. This is the experience of the individual. 
The best resolutions are broken ; the noblest 
impulses are strangled ; the grandest victory 
over wrong may in the next moment be con- 
verted into a defeat. This is the experience 
of the race. The literature of all peoples has 



i8 Back to Bethlehem 

been full of battle sounds. It has voiced the 
agony of the soul in the grip of a giant. In 
the oldest of the Vedas, written on the table- 
lands of Asia while Moses was keeping the 
flocks of Midian, we read: 

"O hear this my calling, Varuna, be gracious now, 
Longing for help I have called upon thee." 

*'Now, now thou art moist clay/' writes 
Flaccus in the gray dawn before the day of 
Bethlehem, "thou must be shaped by the glow- 
ing wheel." Earlier still Noah toils for one 
hundred and twenty years on the ark, putting 
God into every stroke of the hammer; build- 
ing a refuge for himself and for his family 
from the deluge and from depravity. But the 
spirit of drunkenness went with him from the 
ark, and one of the sons who had dwelt with 
him in the consecrated vessel betrayed him 
with mocking and scorn. Simeon the Stylite 
spent thirty awful years on the top of a great 
column, an undressed sheepskin on his back, 
a grazing iron collar about his neck. Yet 
there was no escape from the strife. 

**I hardly with slow steps, 
With slow faint steps and much exceeding pain, 
Have scrambled past those pits of fire that still 
Sing in my ears." 



The Survival of the Fittest 19 

It is a heart struggle, a battle in the deeps 
and dark of the human soul, and every man 
carries about with him the battle ground. 

Moreover, we can never go back to the 
lower ranges. Once having reached the level 
of the spirit we can never return to the purely 
carnal. We are born on the up-grade. To 
reverse the machinery would violate the in- 
stincts of our nature and clash with the eternal 
processes of life. Reversion to type may 
bestialize the humanity that is within us, but 
it can never destroy the fact that we are hu- 
man, nor strangle all our human longings. 
There is no hope for us in the lowlands whence 
we have come, so the ambition of the pro- 
foundest faiths has been to seek quiet at the 
summit. Buddhism, the reaction against a 
degenerate Brahmanism, may be summed up 
in its four "Sublime Verities": i. Existence 
is only pain and sorrow. 2. The cause of pain 
and sorrow is desire. 3. In Nirvana all pain 
and sorrow cease. 4. The way to attain Nir- 
vana is by self-discipline, ending in the oblivion 
of self-consciousness. This Nirvana is dan- 
gerously like annihilation. Struggle and tur- 
moil in life, this struggle arising from the clash 
between the animal and the spiritual ; there is 
no help even in the grave ; the spirit that has 



20 Back to Bethlehem 

not conquered its environment, that is not 
completely master, enters at death into another 
existence and the struggle is renewed; there 
is but one escape, but one refuge; when all 
desires are destroyed, when the soul walks 
alone, stripped, hypnotic, in a barren world, 
then the Arahat has attained Nirvana, and 
living or dead he is at peace. 

So taught the stoics of Greek philosophy. 
They sought apatheia, a state of mind in 
which the passions are extinguished by the 
ascendency of reason. This is the only true 
wisdom: the destruction of emotion, the root- 
ing out of affection, the subordination of 
every instinct and impulse, the power to en- 
dure. "When you kiss your little child or 
wife think, T kiss a mortal,' and so you shall 
not be troubled when they die," is the best 
that Epictetus can offer. The promise of the 
Serpent Bruiser had not reached the ears of 
Buddha. The porches of Athens were sepa- 
rated by measureless distances from the green 
groves of Eden. They looked and there was 
none to help, they wondered that there was 
none to uphold. 

The first prophecy of the Bible is not only 
a declaration of war, it is also a psean of vic- 
tory. The right will triumph by and by. It 



The Survival of the Fittest 21 

may be a long time on the road, but it is com- 
ing. There may be whirlpools and deep ed- 
dies in the river that seem to be creeping up- 
stream, but the great waters have heard the 
call of the sea, and they are moving steadily 
seaward. It was a dark day in Eden when sin 
first became a factor in human life and his- 
tory. The world plan seemed to have failed. 
Before that fateful hour God's favorite word 
had been "bless." And God blessed the living 
creatures, and bade them multiply and fill the 
waters in the seas; and God blessed the man 
and the woman, and bade them multiply and 
replenish the earth and subdue it; and God 
blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, be- 
cause in it he had rested from all his work. 
This had been the keynote of the song of crea- 
tion. But now God begins to speak of things 
as ^'cursed." The earth had been man's enthu- 
siastic ally, now it was to be his unwilling 
servant doing his bidding only under the lash. 
The tree of life had been in the midst of the 
garden and within easy reach; now only he 
that overcometh is to eat of this tree ; and the 
overcoming is the struggle by which we are 
to reach the goal of human endeavor, the con- 
quest of self, the triumph of right. 

But the Deliverer and the deliverance ar? 



22 Back to Bethlehem 

coming. This is the message that comes to 
us from these days of the world's kindergarten. 
The power of evil is to be broken, the right 
is to prevail, the woman who first yielded to 
evil is to have a large share of the final 
triumph. 

This triumph of right is not in the nature of 
things. The race is not to grow into perfec- 
tion. Evolution may produce the physical 
man, but it cannot perfect him. The Ten 
Commandments are not written on the tables 
of natural law. The Sermon on the Mount is 
not the last chapter of the book of material 
development. The ladder up which we have 
climbed lacks the highest round, and this must 
elsewhere be found. If any man would be 
ready to magnify the natural process and to 
be satisfied with it, that man was Mr. Huxley. 
Yet he said in his Romanes lecture, "Let us 
understand once for all that the ethical prog- 
ress of society depends not on imitating the 
cosmic process, but In combating it." Man 
has come to his high estate by the "cosmic 
process," that is, by the successful exercise of 
qualities which he shares with the ape and the 
tiger. "Now," says Mr. Huxley, "he would 
be only too pleased to see the ape and the tiger 
die." Traits which mean success In a savage 



The Survival of the Fittest 23 

state may become criminal in higher civiliza- 
tion. The struggle for life which guarantees 
the safety and the development of the animal, 
when translated into the struggle for a seat 
in a crowded car or the struggle for position 
in public life, marks the boor or the ward 
politician. 

This victory of the race is not to be achieved 
in the material world. Cotton looms and 
smokeless powder do not conquer sin. Physical 
science can never redeem the soul. It can do 
almost everything else. It is the servant of 
man, the friend of the race, the conqueror of 
nature. It has added to the years of human 
life. In the sixteenth century the length of 
a generation in Switzerland was twenty-one 
years ; in the twentieth century it is forty years. 
The discovery of quinine has added two years 
to the expectation of life. In the seventeenth 
century the British government announced that 
ten thousand of each sex died under the age 
of twenty-eight, against six thousand who died 
at the same age one century later. Science 
has broadened our world, opened the door for 
travel and discovery, and given us leisure for 
these pursuits by doing our work for us. It 
has provided us with weapons so that we can 
travel with safety, and with machinery by 



24 Back to Bethlehem 

which we can travel with speed. This earth 
which was once the supreme object of our 
knowledge is now only one of a sisterhood of 
worlds ; the skies have opened to us and we are 
citizens of a universe. The Saracens gave us 
the art of making paper, and the Venetians 
brought us printing blocks from China. Then 
Coster, or Gutenberg, or Faust, or Schoffer, 
as the case may be, made his movable type, 
and then, down went the despotisms and igno- 
rance of the Middle Ages. The mariner's com- 
pass gave America to the world ; the chronom- 
eter made the long trackless voyage safe. 

In all this do we see the hand of science. 
But the way of salvation is not there. The 
principalities, the powers, the world rulers of 
this darkness are not to be conquered by mod- 
ern cannon. The spiritual hosts of wickedness 
in heavenly places are not to be exorcised by 
the whistle of the factory or the fog horn of 
the ships. The perfect man is not the result 
of any new chemical formula nor the outcome 
of any new medical school. Sin is just as 
treacherous, and disobedience to God is just 
as easy and just as fatal, as it was when our 
fathers wore their undressed wolfskins in 
Britain, or wandered homeless and kingless 
through the vast forests of Germany. 



The Survival of the Fittest 25 

But may there not be other enterprises of 
the brain to which we may look for help? 
This intellect, the crowning glory of the race, 
may it not be the Moses to lead the race to 
spiritual freedom? If so, then is our deliver- 
ance close at hand, for this is veritably the age 
of reason. If so, this will simplify the process. 
Our salvation will then be a native product. 
We will save ourselves. Out of our own re- 
sources will the strong web be spun that is 
to lift us over the abysses. The good thing 
will then come out of Nazareth, and will be 
in every sense a Nazarene. The public school, 
will then not only drive away ignorance, but 
it will conquer sin. The binomial theorem, the 
rule of three, will not merely discipline the 
brain, but they will purify the heart. Here is 
a glimpse of Utopia, a return of the Golden 
Age — Pericles without Aspasia, Calvin with- 
out Servetus, Cromwell without Drogheda ; 
supremacy of intellect without improbity; su- 
premacy of faith without fanaticism; an alli- 
ance of the mental and the spiritual that would 
hasten the millennium. 

But intellect is selfish. It is not interested 
in the general good. Its inventions are pat- 
ented, its books are copyrighted. It does not 
throw aside the stage coach for the express to 



26 Back to Bethlehem 

save time for the public, but to increase the 
company's receipts. It appHes the best machin- 
ery and the best chemistry to wheat growing 
not that the price of wheat be cheapened and 
the poor be fed, but that the cost of producing 
be reduced; even controlhng the output and 
creating a panic so that the price may be kept 
at paying figures. And what does intellect 
care for the race as such? To be sure, litera- 
ture is full of sublime passages. Unselfish- 
ness, heroism, the loftiest devotion to principle 
are taught in poetry and prose ; but these senti- 
ments come not from the brain alone. They 
are the utterances of the heart. The brain 
says so often with Hobbes, *'Why are friend- 
ships good things? Because they are useful. 
Why do we pity another? Because we imag- 
ine a similar misfortune may happen to us." 
Human salvation was not to be wrought out 
by the intellect. Edgar Allan Poe gave the 
world a tremendous sermon when he wrote 
The Raven. With inspired genius he left the 
bird of ill omen perched upon Pallas, the god- 
dess of wisdom. Despair sometimes hovers 
over knowledge, never over faith. There was 
no cross of the Crucified in that doomed spirit- 
haunted chamber. The Raven would not have 
stayed if there had been. And from all the 



The Survival of the Fittest 27 

crossless, Christless chambers of the human 
soul, shelved with knowledge and draped with 
the purple silken curtains of pride, there has 
ever gone up the same hopeless dirge: 

"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still 
is sitting 

On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber 
door; 

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's 
that is dreaming, 

And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his 
shadow on the floor; 

And my soul from out that shadow that lies float- 
ing on the floor 

Shall be lifted — nevermore !" 

It is the Seed of the woman who is to bruise 
the serpent's head. The promise of Bethlehem 
is the promise of power. The coming of the 
Christ is to be the coming of the Conqueror. 
He went to the mountain top with the tempter 
and the glory of the world was offered him. 
He refused, because he asked no favors of his 
enemies. The ambitious mother asked him 
that her sons might sit the one on the right, 
the other on the left, when he occupied his 
throne. He was then on his way to the thorn 
crown and the sealed sepulcher. But he an- 
swered as though there would be such posi- 



28 Back to Bethlehem 

tions as the woman coveted and that they 
would be worth occupying. He was pinioned 
to the cross ; the powers of the church and the 
state were combined against him, and he was 
certainly dying. Yet when the man dying with 
him prayed, ''Lord, remember me when thou 
comest in thy kingdom," he replied, "This 
day shalt thou be with me in paradise," as if 
he were still master of the situation and only 
Lord of paradise. His dead body lay all night 
long and all day, and through another night, 
in the sealed sepulcher, and when in the early 
dawn the angels hurried from the skies to roll 
away the stone they found the helpless guards 
prostrate upon the earth, an empty tomb, an 
Easter morning breaking gloriously over the 
hills, and a world already beginning to quiver 
with the consciousness of his presence and the 
awful sense of his supreme power. 

It is the triumph of a new kind of life which 
he came to bring, and to bring more abun- 
dantly. And because he lives this new victori- 
ous life we are to live it also. We are to 
tread down not only the evil in our own life, 
but the evil in the world life. The serpent of 
oppression and injustice and greed must be 
crushed, and we in Christ are to do it. It is 
the survival of the fittest; the higher life in 



The Survival of the Fittest 29 

conflict with the lower and conquering it. The 
author of Christ in Modern Life says, "That 
man is able to live the morality of Christ is 
a modern idea." And yet it is contained in 
the first prophecy. It is the newest orthodoxy 
and it is part of the very oldest faith. **What- 
soever is born of God overcometh the world ;" 
and the world means anything whereby our 
brother stumbleth or is offended or is made 
weak. And the world may be found in the 
marts of trade, in the whirl of society, or 
within the chambers of the heart. 



II 

ENVIRONMENT 



II 

Environment 

The ''Great Unknown" of the schools strikes 
a high key in the opening of Isa. 6^,. What- 
ever the verdict of the historic critics as to 
the time and authorship of these words, the 
Hterary critics have no controversy as to their 
subHmity. The vision of the blood-stained 
conqueror coming from Edom, "marching in 
the greatness of his strength," is inspiring 
whether we view it as the work of Isaiah the 
Benjamite, looking out upon the tremblings of 
Judah and projecting himself by the power of 
his seership into the days of the Babylonian 
captivity ; or the work of the Deutero-Isaiah 
of the exile, whose earnest purpose was to 
save the people from despair, and who has 
given us thus anonymously the most magnifi- 
cent passages of the revealed will of God. 
Whether written years before the events de- 
scribed, or in the midst of those events, the 
words are large words. They touch far hori- 
zons. They foreshadow conditions and meth- 
ods of our modern life. The warrior from 



34 Back to Bethlehem 

Edom is an important factor in the solution 
of present-day religious problems. He is a 
contemporary. 

The critical objection that this and the 
following chapters are too clearly prophetic, 
and that they must therefore be assigned to 
a later date, is unfounded, since they as cer- 
tainly foreshadow the conditions and successes 
of the present as they do the deliverance of 
Israel from Babylon and Edom. We are ful- 
filling in our churches and in our evangelizing 
plans the predictions of this chapter. Here is 
the plan of campaign. The seer looks down 
the long and winding gorges that lead up to 
Jerusalem from the Jordan. Suddenly a 
strange figure appears. It has come from the 
mountains that lie beyond. It has crossed the 
river and is moving majestically up the heights 
of Judea. There are marks of conflict. There 
is the air of victory. The champion of Israel 
has been in Edom and has won his greatest 
triumphs there. 

It is useless to repeat here the venerable 
statement that Edom, the hereditary foe of 
Israel, typifies the evil of the world. Phillips 
Brooks has woven this thought with threads 
of light in his own inimitable way, and every- 
one who has handled this subject since has 



Environment 35 

but copied his pattern. The prophecy is a 
foreshadowing of the victory of Christ, a vic- 
tory that is rewon every century and that is 
written out in the history of the Christian 
church. Edom had been more malevolent even 
than Chaldea. These sons of Esau were fiercer 
in their enmity toward Israel than the sons of 
strangers. In the time of their hegira the 
Israelites were refused permission to pass 
through their land though they promised to 
turn neither to the right nor to the left, and 
even to pay for the water they drank.^ In 
the day of the overthrow of Jerusalem these 
recreant sons of Abraham had cried out, "Rase 
it, rase it even to the foundations thereof."^ 
They had ''spoken proudly in the day of dis- 
tress, and rejoiced proudly over the children 
of Judah in the day of their destruction."^ 
They had even lain in ambush on the "cross- 
ways" to Egypt to cut off those that did escape 
and to deliver them into the hands of the 
Chaldeans. 

Into the very stronghold of this bitter foe 
the Conqueror had gone. He did not wait 
invasion. He was so strong and so self-con- 
fident and so insistent that he was ready to 
take the initiative. It is comparatively easy 

* Num. 20, 14, 21. 2 psa_ i^y. 7. ^obad. 12, 



36 Back to Bethlehem 

to defend. The Alps are better than armies 
for Switzerland. The English Channel is the 
guardian and the guarantee of English homes. 
That little strip of silver sea has marked the 
limit of oppression and serfdom. On the 
oceanward side England has sat and built her 
ships and trained her sons and nursed her vir- 
tues, and there is nothing on the landward side 
that has dared to cross with hostile intent. It 
took three Federal soldiers four years to con- 
quer one Confederate. Not that the latter was 
a better soldier, but he was at home, and the 
former were invaders. De Block, the Russian 
who suggested The Hague Tribunal to the 
Czar, holds that with our modern weapons one 
man in defense is equal to ten men on the 
offensive. But said this majestic warrior: 

"I looked and there was none to help; 

Therefore mine own arm brought salvation to me, 

And my fury it upheld me." 

Over into Edom he crossed. He scaled the 
heights of Teman. Like a lion from the 
thickets of Jordan he sprang upon the flocks 
amid the rock pastures of the Negeb. He 
spread out his wings like an eagle over Bozrah. 
It was more than good triumphant; it was 
good intrusive, good aggressive, good intol- 



Environment 2^7 

erant. It is David who invades the territory 
of the giant with a challenge ; it is the reform 
that does not wait for attack. 

These are modern religious tactics. The 
work of the church is not defensive but offen- 
sive. It has had enough of apologetics that 
were apologies ; it wants a stiff course of 
polemics as a tonic. It fails if it wait for doors 
to open. The doors are to be opened from 
without, and the true faith does not long wait 
on the threshold. A church that is only con- 
servative, that expends its energies in merely 
holding its own, does not deserve to have any 
own to hold ; it deserves to die, it is dying. 
This is the contention of Max Miiller. He 
claims that the nonmissionary faiths are dead 
faiths. The religion of the Mazdeans, for in- 
stance, is narrow and exclusive. It seeks no 
converts, it makes no invasions, and it has 
been reduced in the last three centuries to a 
mere fraction of its ancient strength. Only 
about one hundred thousand souls remain of 
the great hosts that once burned the Bahram 
fire and worshiped Ahuramazda. These refuse 
to admit to their communion any convert not 
of pure Parsee blood, and Zoroastrianism, as 
it is popularly called, is doomed. 

Here is the hope and the salvation of Chris- 



38 Back to Bethlehem 

tianity. Its blood is kept fresh by constant 
infusion. It has always been a missionary 
faith. The tongues as of fire that came at Pen- 
tecost, and that endowed the disciples with 
speech intelligible to Parthians and Medes and 
devout men out of every nation, were a proph- 
ecy and a preparation. Here was the physical 
organ typical of this new enterprise — the 
tongue; here was a message all could under- 
stand; these were the accredited messengers 
who would soon be on the road. The divine 
command is, "Go into all the world;" the 
divine promise is, "I am with you alway ;" the 
divine purpose is that this witnessing, begun 
at Jerusalem, should extend to the uttermost 
parts of the earth. 

The apostles were missionaries. The book 
of Acts is a record of missionary enterprise 
and effort. Its churches are mission stations 
and its chapters are swift reports from the 
field. By the end of the first century there 
were two hundred thousand members of the 
Christian faith. At the end of the third cen- 
tury five per cent of the Roman empire had 
been reached and had yielded. Then, when the 
politician Constantine by legal edict made 
Christianity the state religion, the irrepressible 
faith turned its eyes outward to look for other 



Environment 39 

worlds to conquer. The Mediterranean was 
girdled by the cross, but beyond the sweep 
of the Roman road and beyond the gleam of 
the Roman eagle there were barbarism and 
ignorance. The Arian scholar Ulfilas crossed 
the Danube with a new alphabet which told 
the old sweet story to the Goths. Frumentius, 
the "Father of Peace," went south and the 
historic Abyssinian church began its check- 
ered career of a thousand years. 

Honoratus founded a missionary training 
institute and sent evangelists to capture the 
Rhone valley, the land of olives and sunshine. 
Christopher Columbus sailed from Palos as 
a missionary. In the prologue to his journal, 
which he intended for the inspection of the 
Spanish sovereigns, he speaks of the Grand 
Khan of India who had sent to Rome for 
instructors in the true faith; and because this 
request had not been granted, *^so many peo- 
ple were lost, believing in idolatries and imbib- 
ing doctrines of perdition." He then continues : 
"Therefore your Highnesses as Catholic 
Christians and princes, lovers and promoters 
of the holy Christian faith and enemies of the 
sect of Mohammed and of all idolatries and 
heresies, determined to send me, Christopher 
Columbus, to the said parts of India to see 



40 Back to Bethlehem 

the said princes and the people and lands, 
and discover the nature and disposition of 
them all, and the means to be taken for the 
conversion of them to our holy faith." 
America was discovered by a missionary on 
his way to save the world. 

Francis Xavier, Matthew Ricci, Las Casas, 
are names that flame out like beacon fires 
amid the shadows of the Middle Ages. The 
parting gift of Sir Walter Raleigh to the 
colonists of Virginia was one hundred pounds 
for the propagation of the Christian religion 
in America. Side by side with ideas of col- 
onization were ideas of evangelization. The 
first convert in America was baptized August 
13, 1587; the first child of European parents 
was born August 18 of the same year. The 
new continent was thus given by ceremonial 
rite to Christianity five days before the first 
infant opened its eyes amid the unconquered 
forest and became the forerunner of the new 
race that soon would dominate the land. 

The sporadic attempts mentioned above 
were but prophecies. A new programme of 
missions has been published. Within the past 
century Christianity has adopted the world. 
Hitherto the church has busily cultivated its 
own vineyard. Its reforms have been intra- 



Environment 41 

mural; its warfare has been defensive. Here 
and there, as already noted, straggling parties 
have gone out and a desultory guerrilla style 
of tactics has prevailed. But its Luthers and 
Bezas and Knoxes have needed all their 
strength to keep pure the faith once delivered 
to the fathers. To-day, however, we suspect 
a Christian spirit which is not at the same 
time a missionary spirit. We have no use 
for a faith that does not realize the world, 
and that is not ready to put its arms around 
the whole world. The race has broken with 
the cults that were localized by custom or tra- 
dition. The Nile gods, the Olympian muster 
roll, these recipients of a primal faith have 
been left lonely and forgotten in their an- 
cient haunts. They were vital and alert on 
their native heath, but the world does not any 
longer crouch by the banks of the Egyptian 
river nor catch a glimpse of Olympus from 
its housetops. It is a larger world than it 
used to be. 

The old creeds that limited the divine 
grace and election, the self-centered cult of 
Israel, the huge egoism of the Romanist, the 
pathetic inexorable syllogisms of Calvin — all 
these have beaten themselves out upon a per- 
sistent and a growing individualism; and 



42 Back to Bethlehem 

more and more has it come home to man that 
the only bounds to the divine purpose of re- 
demption are the bounds we ourselves set. 
Nothing less than a cosmopolitan offer of sal- 
vation will satisfy the Christian intelligence 
of the day. We have revised our spiritual 
geographies until they correspond with the 
"whole world" of the apostolic commission. 
Our missionary maps are on the Mercator's 
projection, and the great round globe may be 
seen at a glance. The Conqueror has crossed 
into Edom. The church is strong enough be- 
cause Christlike enough to take the initiative — 
not spasmodically, nor in desultory sorties ; the 
constructor has gone out with the sappers and 
miners, and wherever the church has con- 
quered it has colonized. 

There is marked improvement in the atti- 
tude of the church in another particular. It 
does not wait for the people to come to it; 
it goes to the people. The Great Supper of the 
parable has taken upon itself some new and 
striking developments. The servants have 
been sent to say to them that were bidden, 
"Come, for all things are now ready;" and 
these have made their excuses. Now out into 
the streets and lanes of the city, the highways 
and hedges of the country, the servants are 



Environment 43 

gone, not so much to compel the people to 
come to the feast as to carry the feast to the 
people. This is current. The modern work- 
man carries his tools to the work. TKe saw- 
mill is placed in the midst of the virgin forest, 
the wheat is made ready for the market in the 
field, the miner carries his steam or hydraulic 
drill into the narrowest passages of the mine. 
Going into Edom, this is the new plan of 
campaign. Our downtown churches no 
longer 

"fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away." 

They are modifying their plans and adjusting 
their plants to meet the new conditions. Our 
new enterprises in unpropitious or undevel- 
oped soil are no longer "missions." They are 
"branches," and they have behind them the 
vital resources of the great body that planted 
them. They are expected to grow into inde- 
pendent individual members of the organiza- 
tion for which they stand. The great cathe- 
drals of Europe are lineal descendants of the 
temple at Jerusalem — one degree removed 
from the temple, it is true, since they repre- 
sent an oligarchy instead of a monarchy. 
There is still, however, the idea of exclusion 



^4 Back td Bethlehem 

and of caste. The people must still make 
their pilgrimages to a Mecca or a Zion. Geri- 
zim and Moriah are still rival centers of reli- 
gious enthusiasm and power. But the later 
churches that Christianity has built as the 
swift expedients to meet a local need have 
been a concession to growing democracy. 
Like the cities of refuge they have been 
brought within the sphere of the people and 
placed within easy reach and convenience. 
Christianity has gone out among the people, 
and the churches have followed Christianity. 

We do not want any cathedrals in America. 
The spirit that localizes Christianity is the 
spirit of mediaevalism. The splendid old piles 
that have come down to us from the past are 
eloquent monuments of dead ideals. They re- 
mind us of the day when the people existed 
for the church and not the church for the 
people. They do not so much represent the 
religion as the political ethics of the past, for 
the church was then but another name for the 
state, and both held ol noXXot in contempt. 

The Institutional church is an army division 
thrown out into the enemy's country and gar- 
risoned there. It is a phase of religious ex- 
pansion. It is an invasion of Edom. The 
day nurseries and kindergartens are teaching 



Environment 45 

the language of Canaan in the schools of the 
Edomites, making it the speech of court and 
market place. The free dispensaries, the dea- 
conesses, the Mercy and Help Departments 
are the Red Cross contingents of the invading 
army, and Edom has not seen the like of this 
before. 

"A poor man saved by thee shall make thee rich ; 
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong. 
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense 
Of service which thou renderest." 

We hear a great deal about environment. 
This is the ghost of Banquo at many of our 
feasts, and it has rather a confirmed and con- 
fident habit of shaking its gory locks at us 
whenever we suggest improvement or essay 
reform. ''Heredity and environment,'' says a 
modern high priest of religious sociology, 
"are the master influences of the world. They 
have made us what we are." Over the former, 
of course, we have no control as it may affect 
our life. The influence of the latter is there- 
fore to be considered, and this influence is 
manifest in animate and inanimate creation, 
and is one of the most intricate problems in 
the question of reform. The root of monks- 
hood, from which is extracted an extremely 



46 Back to Bethlehem 

poisonous alkaloid when grown in its native 
soil, becomes harmless when transplanted to 
the frozen North. The splendid oak of our 
American forests loses its dignity and takes a 
plebeian place in South Africa. The spicy- 
sassafras of this continent loses its spice in 
Europe. The intoxicating hemp of India 
lacks its festive qualities when grown in se- 
date England. The oyster, inert and unre- 
sponsive as we are pleased to believe it, if 
taken from the waters of the Atlantic and 
dropped into the Mediterranean begins to 
refashion its garments in the style of its new 
associates. It learns to conform to the world 
in which it lives ; it does as Rome does. 

This power of environment is everywhere at 
work. It affects the child in the cradle, the 
boy on the playground, the whole life from 
beginning to end. It is the mold in which the 
character is cast, the background against 
which and on account of which the chameleon 
takes its color. All this is claimed, and the 
amount of truth in the claim is startling. A 
man depends very much upon the company 
he keeps for the good or bad elements in his 
life. This was a Sunday school truism before 
it became a scientific formula. His occupa- 
tion will leave its imprint upon his face or in 



Environment 47 

his mental methods. Two children of the same 
parentage, placed under radically different 
home treatment, will develop radically differ- 
ent traits. The ideas and ideals of the home 
give shape and tendency to the life. We do 
not look in the slums for the refinements of the 
closely guarded family circle where only that 
which is pure is seen and heard. 

Here, then, is the scheme of modern fatal- 
ism; born well — placed well — all well. But 
let there be a bar sinister in the crest, a dash 
of sediment in the blood; let the conditions 
of life be adverse, the soul born on the down- 
grade, and as fixed as the stars in their 
courses, so certain will be the life wreck and 
the soul ruin of the doomed victim. There is 
no help in Edom for the Edomite. But the 
Conqueror has crossed the river and is face to 
face with conditions on the farther side. The 
modern Christ goes within the sweep of the 
maelstrom of environment and plucks the 
doomed wretch out of the swirl of ruin. The 
modern messenger of Christ lives on the same 
street with those who need him most. The 
city missionary, the Salvation Army, the res- 
cue worker not only resist in themselves the 
power of environment, but they break that 
power over others. 



48 Back to Bethlehem 

Here Christianity meets a new philosophy 
of life. Science has said that a man is what 
he sees and absorbs every day. Now, de- 
clares this philosophy, change his surround- 
ings and you will change the man. Remodel 
the tenement house, ventilate the workshop, 
regulate the hours and conditions of labor, 
and you redeem the race. Give the man a 
bathtub and a bookshelf and a flowerpot, and 
you give him a new ideal and a new inspira- 
tion. This is our gospel of humanity. The 
salvation of the world is to be effected by 
social reform, by the physical and domestic 
elevation of the submerged tenth. The "new 
revival" is creating quite a stir; and this is 
the scheme : "There was a day when a preacher 
could appeal to his hearer and awaken his 
heart to praise because God had saved him 
while thousands had been left to perish, but 
to-day the hearer would firmly suspend his 
praise for his own salvation till he knew what 
was going to become of other people. No 
longer does a man think that the great effort 
of life should be, as the Romans say, *to make 
his own soul,' but rather that it should be 
to help his brethren both in soul and body. 
A sermon on the hell beyond the grave would 
be heard with indifference; a sermon on the 



Environment 49 

hell in the east end of cities will lay hold on 
every man's mind. The sense is creeping over 
the community that socially and physically 
we stand together, and religion cannot remain 
a water-tight compartment of spiritual selfish- 
ness. With such a tide running like a mill 
race and such a wind blowing like a gale upon 
one's face, have we not reason to expect that 
the message of the next revival will be social 
righteousness, and its effect the redemption 
of the national life?'" 

There is much of truth in this, but not all 
the truth. The church has always been 
engaged in social service, and has always 
stood for social reform. But the church 
that neglects the individual, that makes its 
first and main appeal to the improvement of 
economic conditions, is little better than a 
social club. First convert the man, and then 
he will proceed to change his environment. 
Make him dissatisfied with Edom and he will 
modify Edom. Send him home some night 
with a clean heart and a new love, and he will 
see that the wretched hovel in which he has 
housed his wife and children — bare and cold 
and cheerless — is not home ; that the wan, 
hopeless woman and the hollow-eyed little 

^The Rev. John Watson: The New Revival. 



50 Back to Bethlehem 

ones who meet him there have not had their 
share of Hfe, and that he is to blame for it. 
The prodigal started back to his father when 
his environment was at its worst. Solomon 
made a dismal failure of his life in spite of 
the most favorable conditions. The environ- 
ment of Abraham Lincoln may easily be dupli- 
cated in the far West ; and out of such condi- 
tions has come a large harvest of rawboned, 
overgrown rustics, but there has been only one 
Lincoln. The quiet hills about Stratford, the 
thatched cottages, the gently flowing Avon, 
explain nothing of the mastership of Shakes- 
peare, 

"Who walked in every path of human life, 
Felt every passion." 

The pond lily can grow from the foulest 
quagmire. The Bowery may not be a prom- 
ising field, but it is not a hopeless one. Much 
depends upon what is planted there and who 
plants it. The soul that finds its affinity in 
such surroundings will absorb the contagion 
and will ultimately add to the corruption. But 
the soul that repudiates the evil, that finds its 
correspondence with the good only, such a 
soul will keep itself clean in spite of the cess- 
pool in which it grows. "Whosoever is born 



Environment 51 

of God doth not commit sin, for his seed re- 
maineth in him." The seed planted takes from 
the soil that for which it has affinity. The 
seed of wheat absorbs starch, the maple 
searches and finds that which can be converted 
into sugar; the melon seed drinks water even 
in the dry places. So the seed of God in the 
hitman heart draws to itself that which is 
high and noble, and out of the eater comes 
forth meat and out of the strong comes forth 
sweetness, even as Samson gathered golden 
honey from the sun-dried skeleton of the 
Syrian lion. 

Let the Christ Conqueror go into the slums 
and he will prevail against the slums. Let 
him become the environment of the soul and 
it may laugh at all other environment. Let a 
man be able to say, 'Tn him I live, and move, 
and have my being," and it matters little where 
else he may live. In his Comus Milton writes : 

"Some say no evil thing that walks by night 
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, 
Blue meager hag or stubborn unlaid ghost 
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, 
No goblin or swart faery of the mine, 
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity." 

So let the soul be fixed in its fidelity to God 
and it is proof against the impulse of inherited 



52 Back to Bethlehem 

appetite, the appeal of contiguous allurement, 
or the inertia of habitual assent. It is superior 
to its world environment. It has found for 
itself a new correspondence, and "neither 
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to 
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature," can ever separate it from its newer 
choice or drag it back into a hopeless Edom. 



Ill 

THE UNITY OF THE RACE 



I 









I 



Ill 

The Unity of the Race 

Even in America we are beginning to be 
interested in "endless genealogies which min- 
ister questions." There are coats of arms on 
our parlor walls and armorial bearings on the 
panels of our landaus. Some of us are content 
to be known as Sons, or Daughters, of the 
Revolution; others file their claim to distinc- 
tion because of hypothetical family connection 
with a conjectural Mayflower passenger list. 
Still others trace their lineage back to some 
blustering Dick Turpin of the rare old days 
when highway robbery meant knighthood in- 
stead of Newgate. But there is always a point 
beyond which these claims cannot go. Sooner 
or later the clew is lost. The roots of the great 
family tree, like all well-behaved roots, are 
out of sight. 

There is, to be sure, a vague general notion 
prevalent among proper-minded people that 
the lines of ancestry converge in Adam; but 
these lines have never been explored fully, 
and even the notion itself does not lack con- 



56 Back to Bethlehem 

tradiction. The fact is that as we move back 
toward the beginning" we find a manifest dis- 
inclination to accept a single beginning. The 
idea of race unity can scarcely be called intui- 
tive. There was no brotherhood of man among 
the primitive men. The native traditions of 
the early peoples usually dealt with the origin 
of their own clan, and invariably claimed for 
themselves priority of creation, or superiority 
of endowment. Seven generations of heavenly 
deities were followed by five generations of 
earthly deities, and then came the mortal sov- 
ereigns, according to Japanese myth. Menes, 
the founder of Memphis, was the first mortal 
ruler of the Egyptians. Before him had been 
eight gods ; back of these a series of twelve 
greater gods, then Osiris, then Typhon, then 
in the remotest past Horus; and from this 
patrician and exclusive beginning came the 
people of the Nile valley. Four races of man- 
kind were recognized here — the red, the yel- 
low, the black, and the white. Red was the 
sacred, the aristocratic color; and so the 
Egyptians have painted themselves on their 
monuments. The Athenians called themselves 
Autochthones, or those who have sprung from 
the soil ; all others were Barharoi, foreigners. 
The Chinese stoutly keep up this distinction 



Unity of the Race 57 

and its resultant comfortable self-esteem, and 
are slow to readjust their ethnological tables. 
And even our boys and girls were taught until 
a recent date to divide the race into enlight- 
ened, civilized, half-civilized, and barbarous; 
the authors of this tabulation always claiming 
reserved seats in the first section. 

The further back we go the more hopelessly 
divided seems the race according to its own 
traditions. As we approach the source of the 
stream there is an insistent suggestion of divers 
sources. Even Israel, with its ancient docu- 
ments concerning Eden and the confusion of 
tongues, did not appreciate race unity. Her 
prophets might take a theologic, or let us 
say an academic, interest in Chaldea and 
Tyre, but not one of them could be found 
willing to undertake a mission to Nineveh. 
The Christian religion, however, or at any 
rate its earlier exponents, committed them- 
selves to a blood relationship. Paul of Tarsus 
stood among the proud Autochthones in the 
shadow of the Acropolis, and declared that 
God "made of one (blood) every nation of 
men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." 
The courtly audience on Mars' Hill dismissed 
this social reformer with unimpeachable suav- 
ity and well-bred phrases, but he was dismissed 



58 Back to Bethlehem 

none the less. This was not the spirit of the 
Akademeia and the Stoa. This dictum of the 
apostle to the Gentiles has been regarded as 
decisive, and the basis of this new ethnology 
now to be championed by Christianity is the 
tenth chapter of Genesis. This was believed 
to settle all questions as to origin or unity. 
Here is a table of "the nations divided in the 
earth after the flood." Here is a roster of the 
human race so complete and so reliable that 
Augustine w^as ready to scoff at the possibility 
of inhabitants on the further side of the world, 
since no account was given of such in the 
table of Moses. The three sons of Noah had 
repeopled the earth. There were no antipodes, 
for all the peoples whose ancestors had landed 
from the original Mayflower, the Ark, were 
within hailing distance. This was the scheme 
and it was eminently satisfactory, and it may 
be said startlingly correct — within certain 
limits. 

The tenth chapter of Genesis does not com- 
prehend the entire human family. Lenormant 
contends for the unity of the race, but at the 
same time he says, "The descendants of the 
sons of Noah, so admirably catalogued by 
Moses, include one only of the races of hu- 
manity — the white race. The other races, the 



Unity of the Race 59 

yellow, the red, the black, have no place in 
the Bible list of the nations sprung from 
Noah." And so associated with the theory 
that the flood was not universal is the hypoth- 
esis that other peoples besides the race of 
Adam existed at the time of this great con- 
vulsion. The marriage of Cain has been the 
quodlibet of theology, the stage property of 
the cheap critic, and the bete noire of the Bible 
class teacher ever since the poor fellow made 
that famous mesalliance. It is rarely intro- 
duced to the public except as a sort of opera 
houife, where there is a desire to play to the 
galleries or to draw the crowd. Yet it may 
afford a glimmer of light in the gloom of the 
early dawn. It suggests that the Bible does 
not tell all it knows. The little stream of 
Scripture narrative trickles down some royal 
gorge or grand canyon of the dim and un- 
charted past, cabined, cribbed, confined, with 
only an occasional outward glimpse, and the 
world beyond, contemporaneous but unknown, 
may be desert or it may be the garden of the 
Lord. 

The literary world allowed Milton to 
interpret the theogony of Genesis for many 
generations. It has allowed Byron to con- 
strue a perplexing verse of the same book. 



6o Back to Bethlehem 

In Gen. 6. 2 we read, "The sons of God saw 
the daughters of men that they were fair; 
and they took them wives of all which they 
chose." The poet has settled the meaning of 
these words, and the church has said neither 
yea nor nay. In Heaven and Earth Noah is 
made to say in the presence of Samiasa and 
Azaziel — angels, let us understand — 

"These are they, then, 
Who leave the throne of God to take of them wives 
From out the race of Cain ; the sons of heaven 
Who seek earth's daughters for their beauty." 

This has been the popular interpretation of 
the strange verse. And yet the usages of the 
language permit us to understand that the 
sons or servants of the gods, that is, the idol- 
aters, intermarried with the daughters of the 
Adamite, that is, the race of Adam. 

The author of the tenth chapter of Genesis 
is not to blame if he does not include in his 
classification the cave men of Europe, the 
Aztecs of Mexico, the fish-eaters of Aus- 
tralia. Perhaps he did not know of their 
existence actual or prospective. Perhaps it 
was not his purpose to mention them even 
if he did know. The written history of the 
world has been a history of the family of 



Unity of the Race 6i 

Noah. The hoary old kingdom of China looks 
over her shoulder upon an unbroken stretch 
of centuries, but her influence has been slight 
upon general history. There is no Chinese 
blood in the veins of the dominant races. The 
same may be said of other peoples. They have 
contributed but little to the general fund. 
Their records are but partially read, their 
habitat has been circumscribed, they have not 
been related to the vigor and verve of the 
world. Here, then, in this luminous chapter 
we have an index of the world life. By a 
stroke of genius or by the light of inspiration 
the writer catalogues and classifies the makers 
of history. The heroes whose deeds have 
thrilled through a hundred generations ; the 
poets and philosophers and philanthropists, 
the lawmakers and swordbearers, whose names 
have been inscribed upon stone and whose 
memory has been embalmed in song, and 
whose will has mapped out kingdoms — these 
are all here in embryo. But it is the prospectus 
of one great clan only. 

Evidently we must look elsewhere than in 
the Bible for our ethnology, even as we look 
elsewhere for our geology and our physics. 
And so we have a linguistic ethnology, which 
talks sagely of the Aryan, the Semitic, and the 



62 Back to Bethlehem 

Turanian races. The Anglo-Saxon under the 
dome of Saint Paul's or amid the prairies of 
the middle West speaks of seven days in the 
week. The Russian moujik, drinking his 
vodka and growling at the starosta in his win- 
ter-bound village amid the Urals, calls it sem. 
The Persian, lounging under the palm groves 
of Ispahan, says sab. The Greek, as he climbed 
the marble steps of the Acropolis, said hepta. 
The Hindu, poring over his Veda by the snow- 
fed Indus, found the word written saptan. 
Here was one family, the Aryan or Indo-Ger- 
manic. 

Between this and the Semitic stock there 
is the most extraordinary difference. At 
the same time the Semitic tongue is co- 
herent and classifiable. It is the Turanian that 
has proved itself a maverick. It will not sub- 
mit to branding. It is a linguistic salma- 
gundi, a philological omnium gatherum, and 
its capricious irregularities have compelled 
anthropologists to abandon this method of 
classification. Moreover, it was found that 
there is no necessary connection between the 
race and the language. A people may change 
their language as easily as they revise their 
customs. The Normans dropped the Teutonic 
and adopted the French, carrying the latter 



Unity of the Race 63 

language into England and making linguistic 
confusion. There are conquering languages 
as there are conquering races. 

Another attempt to classify the race is by a 
tabulation based upon the color of the skin. 
Three races are thus put in evidence : the 
ruddy, the brown, and the black. And the 
startling thing about this scheme is that all 
the sons of Noah are reckoned in the first 
class. And another startling thing is that 
Adam is held to belong to this class ; and that 
if we are looking for race unity we must look 
further back than Adam. This is in perfect 
harmony with the hypotheses noted above in 
reference to the tenth chapter of Genesis. 
Moreover, we are told that this need not dis- 
concert our mind nor bewilder our orthodoxy ; 
since Adam or the first man of the ruddy race 
was the flowering or the climax of the pre- 
historic brown race; that ages before this the 
primitive black race had culminated in the 
progenitor of the brown people. 

It is thus that the latest science talks of a 
common origin of the human race. Whether 
we go back by routes orthodox or liberal, 
scriptural or scientific, we reach one Rome to 
which all ancestral roads seem to lead. The 
last proclamation of the most fearless science 



64 Back to Bethlehem 

is in harmony with the Old Testament Christ 
whose mission was to a world. The prophet 
looking beyond the limitations of his own peo- 
ple and the prejudices of his cradle faith says: 
'T saw in the night visions, and, behold, there 
came with the clouds of heaven one like unto 
a son of man, and he came even unto the 
ancient of days and they brought him near 
before him. And there was given him domin- 
ion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the 
peoples, nations, and languages should serve 
him." And twentieth-century science, over- 
turning the chauvinism of the ancient creeds 
and courageously questioning traditional or- 
thodoxy, brings its latest findings and lays 
them at the feet of the Universal King; for 
all are of one stocky and the Son of man is 
the rightful sovereign since he is born of the 
blood. 

It will be seen that those who contend for 
a succession of beginnings do not thereby ex- 
clude the earlier races from the plan of salva- 
tion in Jesus Christ If the atonement pos- 
sessed retroactive elements and reached back 
to Adam, why might it not go still further 
until it reaches the fountain head of universal 
humanity. If it has broken down the middle 
wall of partition between the Jew and the 



Unity of the Race 65 

Gentile may it not break down other barriers 
and overleap other bounds 

"Till earth's remotest nation 
Has learned Messiah's name." 

Larger conceptions than this have been 
held. Sir David Brewster speaking of the 
redemptive scheme says, ^'Emanating from the 
middle planet of the system, why may it not 
have extended to them all — to the planetary 
races in the past when 'the day of their re- 
demption had drawn nigh,' and to the plan- 
etary races of the future when 'their fullness 
of time shall come'?" Bishop Marvin writes, 
"We should expect to find it [the atonement] 
a central fact reaching in its effect the utmost 
Hmit of being in space and ditration." These 
quotations are given to show that those who 
may claim a multiplicity of races are not nec- 
essarily committed to a limited redemption, 
since it has been seriously and calmly sug- 
gested that extramundane salvation may be 
wrought by the present scheme. 

The universal phenomenon of a moral nature 
has been accepted as demonstrating race unity. 
Tribes have been found without temples or 
cities or schools, but they have not been found 
without the sense of ought. Some things are 



66 Back: to Bethlehem 

right and some are wrong in the palace or in the 
jungle. Laws are written on stone or papyrus or 
paper or hearts, but they are written. We shall not 
stop to inquire as to the origin of this sense 
of duty. Whether it be grounded in expecta- 
tion of reward, as Paley and Warburton would 
imply, in the fear of punishment, according 
to Professor Bain, or in a recognition of law, 
according to Kant, it is here and it is to be 
reckoned with. Jean Valjean, ex-convict, 
mayor, and benefactor of the town in which 
he lives, learns of a trial in which he is pro- 
foundly interested. An old man is about to 
be sent to the galleys as Jean Valjean. A 
storm rages in his soul. Shall he remain quiet 
and allow matters to take their course? For 
page after page we read the burning lines as 
Victor Hugo leads us through the tragedy. 
Questions of expediency, questions of casu- 
istry, questions of honor, sweep through the 
brain of the tortured man. Waking he de- 
stroys all proofs of his identity. Sleeping he 
enters in a dream the village of Romainville, 
where lilacs grow in April. But the sky is 
gray, the houses are empty, and the city is still. 
Jean Valjean is struggling with the sense of 
ought. 

A native servant in Australia loses his 



Unity of the Race 67 

wife. He asks of his master the privilege to go 
to a distant tribe, and there, according to cus- 
tom, kill a woman in compensation for the life 
of his wife. The request is denied and he is 
threatened with punishment if he attempt to 
carry out his purpose. For months he pines 
and grows thin. He too is struggling with the 
sense of ought. He is seeking to compromise 
with his conscience. He is fighting the battle 
in the dark so vividly described by Victor 
Hugo's pen of fire. One day he disappears. 
He is gone for more than a year. He comes 
back cheerful and happy. No evidence can be 
secured except certain hints dropped by his 
second wife, but it is regarded as morally 
certain that he has put his plan into execution. 
He has obeyed the inner voice. He belongs 
to the same family with Jean Valjean. The 
Indian Thug who was filled with remorse 
when dying that he had not robbed and stran- 
gled as many strangers as his father had; the 
Italian coachman who murdered a lady whom 
he was taking to a country picnic, devoured 
the contents of her lunch basket, and then con- 
fessed to the priest that he had committed a 
sin by eating meat on Friday — these moral 
monstrosities reveal kinship with Cranmer, 
who held his hand in the flames until it fell 



68 Back to Bethlehem 

from the blackened wrist because it had signed 
the recantation ; and with Dr. Johnson, who 
stood all day long in the market place at Litch- 
field because years before he had refused to 
keep his father's bookstall. 

"Yet still there whispers the small voice within, 
Heard through gain's silence and o'er glory's din. 
Whatever creed be taught or land be trod, 
Man's conscience is the oracle of God." 

But there is more in human nature than a 
sense of obligation. There is more or less 
defined a realization of responsibility to an 
unseen Power ; and it is this which lies at the 
base of the sense of ought. This is the sub- 
stratum of religion. Froude defines religion 
as a sense of responsibility to the Power that 
made us. Kant declares that ''Religion con- 
sists in recognizing all our duties as divine 
commands." Here is the blossoming out of 
the sense of ought. When vague and indirect 
it constitutes the moral sense, when directed 
toward some Power as the object of responsi- 
bility it becomes religion. As thus conceived 
religion is not an invention of demagogues, 
a device of cunning priests wherewith to awe 
and control the masses. Certain accessories 
of religious worship or ecclesiastical observ- 



Unity of the Race 69 

ance may have thus their origin. They are 
mere party whips. Rehgion did not originate 
in tradition, since the tradition itself must orig- 
inate. The first morning must have a dawn. 
It did not spring from ancestor worship, how- 
ever beautiful may be that theory. Heathen 
nations usually end by worshiping gods in 
human form ; the beginnings of their theology 
are more abstract and more elevated. Egyp- 
tian, Indian, Scandinavian mythologies are 
cleaner the farther back you go. Mediaeval 
Mariolatry came after primitive Christianity, 
Religion is not the result of curiosity; it is 
not an inference of the intellect. Man learns 
to pray before he learns to reason. He looks 
for the footsteps of God among the stars and 
hears his trailing garments in the winds that 
whisper through the pines before he forms 
the first notion of cause and effect, or enter- 
tains the crudest ideas of design in creation. 
Religion is the attitude of the soul toward the 
God who reveals himself in the soul. It be- 
longs to the soul. It belongs to every soul. 
It is the heritage of the race. It makes the 
race one. 

These revelations of God may be more or 
less definite. They may be supplemented by 
verbal record, or by apprehension of natural 



70 Back to Bethlehem 

phenomena. But the testimony of the Book 
or of nature is only supplementary and sub- 
sequent. It only indorses the inner voice, in- 
terprets its message, and enlarges its vocabu- 
lary. Men are worshiping animals even as 
they are thinking animals. Nobody asks the 
origin of hunger. It is an attribute of our 
physical being, a postulate of continued exist- 
ence. Why, then, ask the origin of religion? 
God was not invented. Man is born reli- 
gious as he is born hungry. His first impulse 
has been to get down on his knees and his next 
has been to lift his eyes toward the skies, and 
the question of the eyes and of the heart has 
been, "Who art Thou whose whispering I 
hear in my secret soul? Reveal thyself, that 
I may know thee. Uncover thy face, that I 
may see thee. Tell me thy name, that I may 
worship thee." No nation has been found in 
which there is no recognition of a Power that 
makes for right or wrong; and the rustle of 
the forest leaves, the moan of the uneasy sea, 
the blast of the storm trumpet, have been as 
the beckoning and signaling in the dark of an 
unspeakable Personality who seemed most 
likely to be able to satisfy the hunger of the 
soul. 

Moreover, man is not only a moral being; 



Unity of the Race 71 

not only is he naturally religious, but he is 
universally susceptible to the appeals of the 
gospel. He is universally salvable by the 
atonement in Christ. Jesus has proved him- 
self to be the desire of all nations. The hea- 
then have been given to him as an inheritance 
and the uttermost parts of the earth as a pos- 
session. "Behold, these have come from far: 
and, lo, these from the north and from the 
west; and these from the land of Sinim." 
There is something about the Christ of the 
present-day thinking that meets the wants of 
the race, and that something is foreshadowed 
in the oldest faiths on record. The unity of 
the race was not emphasized by the writers 
of the Old Testament, but the Redeemer of 
the race was promised, and a redemption 
outlined that is possible to all. And so in these 
latter days the practice of the gospel keeps 
pace with the preaching of science. Ethnology 
outlines its theorem, while Christianity fur- 
nishes the demonstration. The race is one ac- 
cording to the analysis of the schools, the race 
is one in the programme of the church. 

A representative of Christianity went to 
Sierra Leone in 181 6. The remnants of thirty 
African tribes had been stranded there; the 
refuse of slave ships, the battered debris of a 



'J2 Back to Bethlehem 

degraded humanity, besotted by drink, pol- 
luted by lust, maddened by violence. In eighteen 
months from the landing of the missionary 
a genuine Pentecost came with its religious 
fervor and heavenly uplift, and in seven years 
the community had become a model state. 
Jerome saw the Scots devouring human flesh. 
"Though there were plenty of cattle and sheep 
at their disposal, yet they preferred a ham of 
the herdsman or a slice of the female breast 
as a luxury." By means of the gospel of 
Christ these cannibals have blossomed into a 
Robert Burns or a Christopher North or a 
Dr. Chalmers or a John Hall. Charles Darwin 
visited the lower coast of South America, and 
wrote : ''The Fuegians are in a more miserable 
state of barbarism than I had expected ever 
to have seen a human being. In this inclem- 
ent country they are absolutely naked. As 
they threw their arms wildly around their 
heads, their long hair streaming, they seemed 
more like troubled spirits of another world." 
This was in 1833. Allan Gardiner went to 
these people with the gospel, and in a few 
years they had organized a society among 
themselves to rescue shipwrecked sailors. 

In 1870 Darwin wrote Sir James Sullivan 
that the success of the mission among these 



Unity of the Race 73 

savages was "most wonderful, and shames me, 
as I always prophesied utter failure. I shall 
feel proud if your committee think fit to elect 
me an honorary member of your society." As 
a testimonial to his confidence in the work of 
the missionaries he inclosed a check for 
twenty-five dollars to the fund. The lowest 
race on earth had been discovered to be human 
by the Ithuriel spear of the Christ message. 
Even they could understand. The Archbishop 
of Canterbury, speaking at the annual meeting 
of the South American Missionary Society 
in 1885, said that the society ''drew the atten- 
tion of Charles Darwin and made him in his 
pursuit of the wonders of the kingdom of na- 
ture realize that there was another kingdom 
just as wonderful and more lasting." 

This capacity to receive and to appropriate 
the gospel is the nexus that binds the race as 
a whole; that proves humanity to be a unit. 
Pliny set out to classify the animal creation, 
and he divided it into sea beasts, and earth 
beasts, and air beasts. Aristotle was more 
acute when he said there were but two kinds 
of animals, the blood-holding and the blood- 
less, or the Encema and the Ancema. Two 
thousand years later Linnseus divided them 
into ''beasts, birds, amphibians, fish, insects, 



74 Back to Bethlehem 

and worms." Even Linngeus did not look be- 
low the surface. He judged by external form. 
He was deceived by appearances. To-day 
classification is based not upon shape or color 
or habitat, but upon structure. And so we 
hear of the great order of Vertebrata, the 
backbone family, and everything with a back- 
bone belongs to that family. What if it be 
a fish and dwell in the caverns of the sea ; what 
if it be a reptile and glide through the ooze 
of the swamp; what if it be a bat and whirl 
through the gloora of the night; what if it be 
an ape and mow on its perch in the park; 
what if it be an emperor whose word is the 
law of millions ? Science, the social democrat, 
has said to all, ''Ye are kindred." The spinal 
column is there. This articulated elastic chain 
of bones binds together the high and the low, 
the clean and the unclean, the upright and the 
prone, into one great family. Every other 
classification is false. So is any classification 
of the human race based upon color or speech 
or culture. It may serve as a convenient 
gauge for practical use, but it is not the last 
analysis. Not the skin, not the brain, but the 
heart marks man as man. And wherever there 
is a heart that responds to the love of Christ 
there is a member of the great family for 



Unity of the Race 75 

whose material good the world was made, and 
for whose spiritual rescue the Creator died. 

And so, whatever may be the findings of 
a radical and revolutionary science, however 
much our cradle faiths may be jarred and our 
family circle broken by the restless intruder 
Evolution, the truth still abides that we are 
brothers. This is not the result of civilization 
but the basis of civilization. Men do not learn 
this as they grow enlightened, but there can 
never be the highest enlightenment until men 
start with this as a premise. The lesson is 
a large one. We have been taught by our 
theological masters that God had but one Son ; 
that men unsaved are merely animals and 
when saved merely adopted children. That 
there is no spiritual blood relationship with 
those beyond the territory of regeneration. 
We do not believe all this now. We have 
learned to call Jesus the great Elder Brother; 
not mine but ours, not sectional but ethnic. 
Men of every race, of every moral grade, of 
every theological creed, are the sons of a King 
— prodigal sons, let us say, but sons; and re- 
generation is the stripping of the rags, the 
purging from the swine pens, the reseating at 
the table. Change of heart? Yes. Change 
of nature? Yes. But not change of blood 



76 Back to Bethlehem 

nor change of lineage. "For Thou art our 
Father, though Abraham knoweth us not, and 
Israel doth not acknowledge us : thou, O Lord, 
art our father ; our redeemer from everlasting 
is thy name." 

With this message we go to the world. It 
is God's world filled with God's men and 
women. They, not God, need to be recon- 
ciled. They, not God, need to remember 
their relationship. And it is this great truth 
which appears here and there in the old dis- 
pensation that is coming more and more to the 
front as we get back to Bethlehem and the 
Christ. 



IV 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RACE 



IV 

The Development of the Race 

A RECENT writer has said that church his- 
tory moves not in straight hnes, but in cycles 
not always symmetrical, but more or less defi- 
nite, and each cycle consisting of four seg- 
ments. These segments he calls the mystical, 
the doctrinal, the scholastic, and the critical. 
In the mystical period "the truth is held in 
solution." In the doctrinal it is "precipitated 
and takes visible form." In the scholastic the 
molten doctrine has been "run into molds and 
has settled into cast-iron shape." And then 
comes the time when men, growing weary of 
forms, "go back to elementary facts" and re- 
examine foundations ; this is the critical 
period. The first is the age of Saint John; 
the second is the age of Chrysostom ; the third 
is the age of Thomas Aquinas ; the last is the 
age of Erasmus. Then begins another cycle. 
The mystical period is represented by Jacob 
Boehme in Germany and by Madame Guyon 
in France. The doctrinal era finds worthy 
exponents in the Puritans and Scotch Gov- 



8o Back to Bethlehem 

enanters. Then came Leibnitz and Spinoza 
and Lessing, who may fairly be said to repre- 
sent the scholastic stage ; and then the critical 
era — introduced by the textual criticism of the 
Bible by Kennicott, Griesbach, and others, and 
supplemented by what Eichhorn was pleased 
to call ''higher criticism," to distinguish it 
from the linguistic and philological study of 
the book. 

For a generation past v/e have been living 
in the critical segment of the cycle. It is the 
climacteric period, the aphelion point of the 
orbit where the flying body gathers itself for 
the return toward the center, the ebb of the 
night when animate and inanimate nature 
with a weird thrill of expectancy turns its 
face toward the east. There is reason to be- 
lieve that another cycle is about to begin, that 
we are on the threshold of another mystical 
era. German rationalism is less positive in its 
findings. A radical American has already 
asked in some perturbation if Professor Har- 
nack has not gone to Canossa. Professor Arm- 
strong, of Wesleyan, writes of the return to 
faith, and says that the "era of doubt is draw- 
ing toward its close." The watchword of the 
day is, "Back to Christ," and a glance at the 
newest book suggests that the trend toward 



The Development of the Race 8i 

a moderate pietism is a sign of the times; a 
marked evangelism indeed seems imminent. 

These periods are not so much cycles, after 
all, as spirals of progress — a sort of evolu- 
tionary switchback railroad on which the train 
apparently returns again and again to the same 
point but each time higher up the slope, a 
change of altitude rather than a change of 
latitude. It is the struggle of Christianity with 
the inertia of the race ; it is the natural ferment 
of the truth, and is inevitable when we con- 
sider the problem of race evolution to be 
solved and the character of the great faith by 
which the work is to be done. Moreover, its 
consideration throws some light on the theo- 
logical unrest which is so marked in the best 
thinking of the day. 

Christianity is essentially constructive. It 
creates. Whatever it touches it improves. 
It destroys only to reproduce in better form. 
It permits the seed to die as the condition and 
the prophecy of harvest. John the Baptist 
came — rugged, fierce, declamatory — and said, 
*'Now also the ax is laid unto the root of the 
trees ;" and the world waited and watched 
for the divine Woodman. But the mission of 
Jesus was not "to destroy, but to fulfill." 
There was much that was wrong, many radical 



82 Back to Bethlehem 

changes to be made ; but it was correction and 
not destruction, fruition and not annihilation, 
that was needed. Thus the Master said, 
''Among them that are born of women there 
hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist : 
notwithstanding he that is least in the king- 
dom of heaven is greater than he." John 
was a destroyer. He declared war upon exist- 
ing religious conditions. He thundered against 
the hypocrisy of the day; and, clothed in 
camel's hair and disdaining all luxuries, he 
dwelt a hermit in the desert. There was only 
one way to cure the evils of the time, and 
that was by unquenchable fire. This was his 
theory of reformation, and his idea of the 
imminent reformer. So, when the Messiah 
had come and the world moved on undisturbed 
and political conditions remained unchanged, 
a great doubt oppressed the Baptist, and out 
from his prison came the momentous inquiry, 
"Art thou he that should come, or do we look 
for another?" John was in theory a destroyer, 
but Christianity is not a system of destruction. 
The least of those who have caught its con- 
structive spirit, who are filled with the instinct 
of growth, whose ambition is to lift, to en- 
large, to exalt, is in so far greater than the 
great forerunner who plowed deep the furrow 



The Development of the Race 83 

but had not the seed ready with which to 
fecundate the waiting soil. 

No scheme can flourish on a "Thou shalt 
not." No system of destructive criticism can 
ever be incorporated and abide. The world 
wants more than negation. Agnosticism, 
which, according to Frederick Harrison, is 
"the belief that there is a sort of something 
about which we can know nothing," can never 
be the conquering creed. Alaric and Genghis 
Khan and Tamerlane are not of the world's he- 
roes. The world prefers a Robinson Crusoe, 
building his hut in the thicket and making the 
wilderness fruitful, or a Robert Clive, who 
gave India to Great Britain and daybreak to 
India. 

In the constructive process Christianity has 
sought everywhere for material and for plans. 
It lays the world of thought and of motive 
under contribution. The Bible contains the 
word of God, but it does not contain all of 
that word. It does not claim to possess it all. 
On the contrary, it constantly refers us to 
other sources of knowledge and of truth. 
The heavens declare the glory of God, as 
well as the book. Paul testifies that God 
has not "left himself without witness," even 
where there is no Bible, "in that he did 



84 Back to Bethlehem 

good, and gave us rain from heaven, and 
fruitful seasons." Coleridge is not a 
heretic when he says: 

"Believe that every bird that sings, 

And every flower that stars the elastic sod, 
And every breath the radiant summer brings, 
To the pure spirit is a word of God." 

Jesus calls the lilies and the sparrows to give 
testimony, and God is ready to refer his con- 
troversy with Job to the war horse, the levia- 
than, or to the swing of Orion and Arcturus. 
These things were before there were any 
Scriptures. There is the truth of God and there 
is the purpose of God revealed constantly in 
history. The daily papers contain his march- 
ing orders. The nations of the world are our 
schoolmasters to lead us unto Christ. Every 
fragment of figured clay from the mounds of 
Chaldea, every page of lettered papyrus, every 
hieroglyph of hoary Egypt is a fresh install- 
ment of the message of God to man. 

Christianity has drawn from all these 
sources. It stands ready to correlate all these 
truths. It is not ashamed to pick up a gem 
from the mire. It is not afraid to appropriate 
a great truth, even though it be born and bred 
in the haunts of great errors. It has heeded 



The Development of the Race 85 

the counsel of Lowell written in a copy of 
Omar Khayyam: 

"Where Doubt's eddies toss and whee! 
Faith's slender shallop till her footing reel, 
Plunge ! If you find not peace beneath the whirl, 
Groping you may like Omar grasp a pearl." 

Philo, the Alexandrian philosopher, sought 
to harmonize the Mosaic and the Platonic 
philosophies, and adopted the word "Logos." 
This word is intended to mean the embodi- 
ment of the divine powers. It is impersonal; 
it is unintelligible ; it is misleading. Out of 
it came the formidable gnostic heresy. It was 
a dangerous word to handle, as it was full of 
unexplored possibilities. Yet Christianity 
caught it, domesticated it, and it became the 
shibboleth of the fourth gospel, the sign man- 
ual of John the Beloved. As a religious symbol 
the cross is prehistoric. There was a cross 
on the great glass image of Serapis brought 
from the Black Sea three centuries before 
Christ, and the priests of Egypt begged that 
it might be spared as it was the emblem of 
their god and of the life to come. The Span- 
ish missionaries found the natives of America 
worshiping the cross. It is engraved upon 
the oldest temples in Mexico and Central 



86 Back to Bethlehem 

America — buildings of unknown antiquity. It 
was called the "key of the Nile" by which 
Osiris opened the fountains of the south and 
poured the life-giving river over the land. 
''Thor's Hammer," as it is called, found on 
ancient stones in the far north, is but a rude 
figure of the cross. The old Viking made a 
sign of the hammer over the meat offered at 
sacrifice ; it was the sign of the cross in crude 
and initial form. Egypt, Assyria, China, 
Scandinavia have thus antedated Christianity 
in the use of its most sacred symbol, and 
Christianity has not disdained to accept that 
which comes fragrant with the mystery of a 
world-wide reverence and hallowed with the 
associations of countless centuries. 

The pagan father in Norway received the 
infant, and, if he decided to preserve it, poured 
water over it and gave it a name. To destroy 
its life after that was murder. The child had 
been initiated into civil life — it had been bap- 
tized. And this, centuries before the first in- 
fant received its Christian name on the appli- 
cation of water and was thus initiated into the 
church. Was there an exalted precept of 
Greek philosophy or a pregnant line of Greek 
poetry, it became a part of the message of this 
new religion to the world. Was there a sug- 



The Development of the Race 87 

gestive Roman custom or a worthy Roman 
law, it has come down to us wearing the Hvery 
of the Christian faith. 

Thus is prepared a system thoroughly 
equipped to become the efficient cause of race 
evolution. It is a specific compounded of the 
best ingredients. It is a piece of machinery 
in which are combined all the latest im- 
provements. Its appeal is found to be 
ever fresh and new, and its tendency is always 
to construct and to dignify. For instance, it 
reveals God — a God large enough for the 
growing wants of the race, a God who by his 
essential nature helps the race to grow and 
gives it room in which to grow. In him we are 
led out into a large place. He is uncreated. 
He is infinite. He is the author of the past 
and the arbiter of the future. He is himself 
a builder, and whatever goes forth from his 
hand carries in it the impulse and spirit of de- 
velopment. This religious scheme reveals 
life — not merely the play of emotions, the en- 
terprise of trade, the interchange of greetings 
which make our diary record, but the larger 
life as it stands related to the universe; the 
end of the path which has been left out of sight 
behind, and the end which is not yet on the 
horizon ahead. We are not strangers to our- 



88 Back to Bethlehem 

selves, when we have listened to the teachings 
of Christianity; we are not strangers and pil- 
grims on the earth, as were the old patriarchs. 
It is Immanuel's land, and it belongs to us 
none the less because we go hence, by and by. 
We have learned why we are here, and the 
path that leads hence when the school is over. 

There are religions and religions. Some 
keep men as they are. There is no stir, no 
progress. The dead hand is on the brakes. 
The will of the fathers is the way of the chil- 
dren, and life stagnates. Other religions are 
distinctly evil. They encourage vice. They 
pander to the lowest instincts; indeed, they 
make the perversion of these instincts a reli- 
gious service, and bring man in his devotions 
— in fact, by his devotions — to lower levels. 
Idolatry manufactures its gods, and gives them 
"few of the attributes of heaven and all of the 
attributes of earth." They are usually inhu- 
man, rather than superhuman. "Think of 
Buddha and you become Buddha" is Chinese, 
and it is also psychology. If the life is to be 
exalted the object worshiped must be superior 
to the worshiper. Hinduism and Buddhism 
offer no help in this world, and Confucianism 
offers none in the world to come. Moham- 
medanism knows nothing better than the sword 



The Development of the Race 89 

as an evangelizing agency, and nothing higher 
than sense as the motive or reward of service. 
But Christianity puts man on the upward path, 
shows him the sun blaze on the summit, fills 
his soul with longing, and wings his feet with 
hope ; then it keeps step with him upward into 
the light. In the struggle for supremacy be- 
tween flesh and spirit Christ's Christianity is. 
never on the earth side. It does not degrade 
the body; it glorifies it by making it subordi- 
nate. It does not destroy sense, it directs it. 

The effect of this is to magnify the individ- 
ual. The value of human life is a modern dis- 
covery. It was the cheapest commodity in the 
market until quite recently. And that not only 
in pagan lands — in Rome, where the flesh of 
slaves was used to fatten the fish for the patri- 
cian table; in the Fiji Islands, where a life 
was sacrificed whenever a canoe was launched ; 
in Dahomey, where the living wives were 
buried with broken legs in the pit with their 
dead husband — but in England, and even in 
America. England executed three hundred 
beggars in one year for asking alms. To shoot 
a rabbit in the New Forest of William I was 
to be hanged or boiled alive. To cut down a 
tree in an orchard, to steal property to the 
value of five shillings from a shop or forty 



90 Back to Bethlehem 

shillings from a dwelling house, to break 
through a window and take goods at five 
o'clock in the afternoon, to counterfeit the 
stamp used as a tax on hair powder — this 
meant death. To stay away thrice from church 
was a capital offense in old Virginia. 

It is the modern Christ who emphasizes the 
greater value of a man than a sheep. In the 
days of his incarnation Jesus tried to teach that 
the hairs of the head are numbered, that all 
heaven sympathized with the return of a single 
sinner, that one sheep on the mountains at 
nightfall meant distress and confusion through 
all the household and a night of unrest and 
wandering on the part of the shepherd. But 
the world forgot all this, and is only recently 
bringing it to mind. During the late war with 
Spain a crowd stood in front of one of the 
great metropolitan newspaper offices reading 
the changing bulletins. A little fellow had 
been dressed as an American sailor and placed 
upon the scaffold where he could walk back 
and forth in full sight. Suddenly he stumbled 
and fell. A cry of dismay went up from the 
crowd, and one man, rough-handed, brown- 
faced, rude-mannered, cried out, with more 
or less of unreportable expletives, "Catch him 
quick, he's worth more than the whole news- 



The Development of the Race 91 

paper!" The ancestors of that man would 
have left the boy out in the forest to die, if it 
had not suited their fancy to maintain him. 
The famous line, 'T am a man, and whatsoever 
concerns humanity concerns me," when first 
uttered on a Roman stage brought the whole 
audience to their feet with shouts of applause. 
Yet the man in the play who gives expression 
to such a noble sentiment is the father who a 
little earlier had complained because his wife 
exposed one of their children, instead of killing 
it as he had commanded. 

Abraham prepared to put Isaac to death 
without any scruples of conscience. His 
father-heart was broken, his faith in God's 
promise that in Isaac the earth should be 
blessed was shaken, but there is no reason to 
believe that there was any question in his mind 
from the ethical standpoint. To-day the moral 
complexion of such a sacrifice would be argued 
as proof that the command did not come from 
God. Abraham had no such problem to solve, 
as his valuation of human life was vastly dif- 
ferent from that which now obtains. 

Wherever Christianity has been permitted to 
proclaim its whole message it has taught that 
life is sacred. The Spanish Inquisition, the 
horrors perpetrated in the Netherlands, the 



92 Back to Bethlehem 

atrocities of Cortes and Pizarro were made 
possible by first crippling the true faith. One 
of the surgeons of the Charity Hospital, Stock- 
holm, experimented at first upon calves with 
the virus of smallpox. But this was expensive, 
and, according to his own declaration, he 
eventually used children as subjects, since chil- 
dren were cheaper than calves. In the Vienna 
hospital experiments were made upon the hap- 
less patients with hyoscyamine sulphate, while 
the tortured victims would again and again 
beg on bended knees for death as a relief from 
their suffering. Here, Christianity was vir- 
tually discarded, and a dead materialism took 
its place. Men and women are only animals. 
And this is science, whose *'sweet reasonable- 
ness" is so often pledged to check the des- 
potism of the church, unlock the fetters of 
tradition, and preach the brotherhood of man. ^ 
All these atrocities are perpetrated in this 
sacred name. Not a perversion of science, 
but a science without religion — a cold, plan- 
ning brain, an unsanctified intellect, a lawless 
corsair steel-prowed and armor-clad that 
ranges the seas, obedient to no orders, owing 
no allegiance, carrying no flag, ready to ride 
down anything that crosses its path of discov- 
ery or conquest. Christianity founded these 



The Development of the Race 93 

hospitals and now pleads to control them, and, 
when it does, experiments with living human 
flesh to gratify curiosity or to establish some 
personal dictum will cease, for the body is the 
temple of the Holy Ghost. 

A religious scheme that develops the in- 
dividual gives the race better leaders, and 
the race has come into its kingdom largely 
through leadership. Men of power are more 
than a product of their times, they are the pro- 
ducers as well. They represent in the begin- 
ning the best possible raw material, before it 
has been wrought upon by the machinery; in 
the end they improve the machinery. The 
times help to develop them, and they enrich 
the times so that the next evolution is yet 
larger and better. The history of the race 
cannot be written if we leave biography out. 
It will be full of impassable gaps. Greek phi- 
losophy is terra incognita without Socrates 
and Aristotle. Charlemagne is another name 
for mediaeval Europe. It has been said that 
"time was the parent and silence was the nurse 
of the British Constitution" ; yet the growth 
of that majestic unwritten instrument cannot 
be noted without a study of the lives of Sir 
Matthew Hale, Lord Somers, and others. 
Christianity trains leaders. It brings out the 



94 Back to Bethlehem 

best in the individual. It shows him, indeed, 
that there is a best in him. It plants the first 
seed of self-respect in the heart, and stands 
guard over the field as the harvest matures. 
It makes the man who makes other men. It 
stimulates to the best endeavor those who be- 
come a stimulus to others. It is the normal 
class where the teachers of the world are in 
training. 

But it deals also with the rank and file. 
Its mission is not only to the man on the 
bridge, but also to the man behind the gun. 
In its leavening of the individual Christianity 
leavens the whole lump. The crowd is only 
an aggregation of individuals, the race is 
only a confederation of units. If each man is 
of the blood royal it is a race of kings. The 
religion of Osiris built obelisks written all over 
with silly compliments to the reigning Pha- 
raoh, and pyramids in which one man was 
buried and in the construction of which thou- 
sands of other men died under the lash. The 
religion of Jesus Christ builds in that same 
land a giant dam across the Nile, by which 
thousands of acres are to be irrigated and hun- 
dreds of thousands are to be fed. Rome called 
its inns hospitalia, and lodged there the fa- 
vored guest; Christianity calls them "hos- 



The Development of the Race 95 

pitals," and means either a place for medical 
treatment or an asylum for the poor. Chris- 
tianity denies the theory of Epicurus and Lu- 
cretius, that the gods never interfere with life 
on this earth, that the concerns of the world 
do not affect them, that they dwell within 

"The lucid interspace of world and world, 
Where never creeps a cloud nor moves a wind, 
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 
Their sacred everlasting calm." 

Its pleasure is to reveal to us a God who 
looks after the grass of the field, and provides 
for the ravens that venture upon the shelter- 
less winter without storehouse or barn. When 
the barbarians came down upon Italy and the 
race seemed to be swept from its moorings 
Christianity put herself at the head of these 
savage world-breakers, taught them how to 
form stable governments, and led them into 
the path of progress. When the dark ages fol- 
lowed, as a result of this overthrow of order, 
and learning was about to be buried in the 
ruins of the cities and kingdoms that went 
down in the track of Genseric and Attila, 
Christianity opened her cathedral schools and 
trained her priests and monks to keep the "fires 
of literature burning by the side of the fires 



96 Back to Bethlehem 

of the altar." When that learning seemed 
destined to become the heritage of the rich 
and leisured classes only, Christianity taught 
Gutenberg how to carve his movable types, 
and prompted Luther to break the dead hand 
of the obsolete languages and turn the Bible 
loose in the mother tongue. 

The result of all this may now be clearly 
seen. The development of the individual 
means the overthrow of feudalism, civil or 
ecclesiastical. There are still traces of me- 
disevalism in theological opinion and relics of 
feudalism in ecclesiastical polity, but they are 
doomed by the law of the survival of the fit- 
test. This, of course, implies revolution, as 
well as evolution, and revolutions destroy many 
an ancient landmark and disturb many a 
night's slumber. It means the birth of modern 
criticism, but since Christianity is the foster 
mother of criticism we need not fear that the 
latter will ever become a matricide. Out of 
this uplift have come Columbus and Magellan 
and Da Gama in discovery; Bacon and Des- 
cartes and Darwin in science ; Luther and Sa- 
vonarola and Wesley in religion ; Delitzsch and 
De Wette and Driver in exegesis. Out of it 
has come modern history, where every man 
has a right to look for the truth. And the 



The Development of the Race 97 

honest quest of truth and its fearless announce- 
ment when discovered are the surest safe- 
guards against the reactionary forces, ever in 
evidence, that would block the wheels of prog- 
ress, stagnate the currents of evolution, and 
stay the sunrise that is breaking over the 
world. 



V 



ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT- 
MILITARISM 



LofC. 



V 

Arrested Development — Militarism 

The world is waiting for the peacemaker. 
The millenniums of militarism have wearied 
the race of strife. The fight has gone on since 
the dawning of organic life. Indeed, before 
there was life the action and interaction of 
cosmic forces were a fitting prelude to the 
struggle that was inaugurated when the first 
cell quivered with the vital germ. The ocean 
bed is strewn with battered fragments of the 
solid land, and the mountain peak will show 
you shells and sea fossils, the trophies won 
from the deep. The rivers came down from 
the hills, cutting deep channels as they came, 
and now spend their strength in chafing against 
their self-made barriers and trying to get out 
of bounds. All over our Northern states are 
scattered bowlders, ''lost rocks," that have 
been dragged away from their home in the 
stress of world growth, and will never get back 
again. The Churchill Rock in New Hamp- 
shire weighs six thousand tons and came from 
the Hudson Bay. The porphyry bowlder of 



102 Back to Bethlehem 

Saint Ignace, Michigan, has no kindred south 
of far Canada. In the grapple of giants these 
fugitives were torn from their family groups. 
The march of the glacier brought them south 
and left them lonely and forgotten. 

Life came to share with matter the heritage 
of conflict; to measure swords with matter 
for standing room and forage ; to wage cease- 
less internecine war for the perpetuation of 
species. In this succession came man. "To 
your tents, O Israel," has been his rallying 
cry from the beginning. He must prove his 
right to exist and prove it against all comers. 
The elements were in the list. The cold, the 
heat, the storm, the drought sent in their cartel. 
He must run the shifting gauntlet of the turn- 
coat year. He fought for food, for the fishing 
streams and hunting grounds. He fought for 
his wife, his children, his clan. He is fighting 
still, and there are those who teach that he 
must go on fighting to the end. To them there 
is no lesson in evolution, no ultimate good to 
the race. What has been will be, and will be 
because it has been. 

It is said that war kindles patriotism; that 
a man never realizes his love for the flag until 
it is afield ; that the rattle of the drum in the 
street awakens all his latent loyalty; that in 



Arrested Development 103 

the grave of dead heroes a nation buries its 
sectionalism and partisanship. There is a 
sense in which this is true. The war with 
France made a united Germany and crowned 
the king of Prussia German emperor. The 
recent war with Spain rubbed out the Mason 
and Dixon's Hne, sent cowboy and banker to 
sleep under the same tent, and made "The 
Star-Spangled Banner" a national song. Yet 
the truest patriotism is opposed to war. Dr. 
Johnson called patriotism "the refuge of the 
scoundrel." He had in mind a certain not 
unusual brand of the article in question, and 
he knew what he was saying. The demagog- 
ism that shouts for war expecting it to become 
the arena for personal glory ; the Ishmaelitism 
whose hand is against every man's hand; the 
jingoism that always carries a chip on its 
shoulder; the chauvinism that cannot see 
across the national boundary — these are some- 
times called patriotism and go into the lists 
with blare of trumpet and beat of drum. But 
genuine patriotism is not compounded of such 
stuff. 

The intelligent patriot knows that the 
good of his country is involved in the general 
good of mankind: that the best interests of 
his own land lie not in slaughtering nations, 



104 Back to Bethlehem 

but in selling to them. At New Haven in 
1898, during the Spanish War, William H. 
Taft, later Secretary of War, said : "There are 
several kinds of patriotism. We heard in 
Alumni Hall this morning of that quiet, self- 
denying patriotism which is working for the 
good of all in securing better government, and 
which has not the plaudits of the crowd and 
the deep gratitude of the people before it as 
a reward for labor and self-sacrifice. In the 
long run this kind works more for the good 
of the country than any other. It needs not 
the spur of palpable danger or the excitement 
and fervor of war's alarms to arouse it. It 
is a constant force making for public right- 
eousness." 

Indeed, war tends sooner or later to the 
stifling of the truest patriotism. It paves 
the way for the despot. Against the back- 
ground of powder clouds appears so often 
the dim figure of "the man on horseback." 
The man whose word is supreme in the camp 
may practice dictation in the market place. 
There can be no method in the march nor in 
battle without absolute authority, and the same 
authority may extend to civil life ; will natu- 
rally affect civil life if the latter be saturated 
with militarism. Herbert Spencer cites the 



Arrested Development 105 

case of ancient Peru under the control of the 
miHtant Incas. The nation was enslaved. 
The clothing worn by the different classes was 
prescribed, and the dining room door must 
be kept open so that the judges might enter 
at any moment. *To live in Germany at the 
present time is like returning to the nursery," 
says a recent writer. The civilian has no 
rights which the soldier is bound to respect. 
Any criticism of the Kaiser is lese-majesty 
and is treated as felony. The critic is not 
allowed bail and is brought to trial in prison 
dress — and all this since the Franco-Prussian 
War. War sooner or later stifles true patriot- 
ism by suggesting a false ideal to the patriot 
by cultivating national selfishness, by shutting 
his eyes to the excellencies found in other 
states, and by training him to a recognition 
of supreme authority that will paralyze his own 
individuality. 

This leads to the consideration of another 
military sophism. M. Lavisse, in A General 
View of the Political History of Europe, says, 
"It is a question whether universal peace is a 
desirable object, whether it would not diminish 
the original energy of national genius." "The 
Private Soldier," writes Lord Wolseley, "must 
believe that his duties are the noblest that fall 



io6 Back to Bethlehem 

to man's lot. He must be taught to despise 
all those of civil life." Even Tennyson, the 
broad-spirited poet, lends his voice to the 
glorification of vi^ar, a war that reflected but 
little credit upon England : 

"And the heart of the people beat with one desire, 
For the peace, that I deemed no peace, is over and 

done. 
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic 

deep. 
And deathful grinning mouths of the fortress, flames 
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire. 
Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down the wind, 
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are 

noble still, 
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to a better 

mind; 
It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the 

ill; 

I embrace the purpose of God and the doom 
assigned." 

So it is said again and again that war awak- 
ens energy and courage; that it develops the 
nobler qualities and gives inspiration to the 
race. Then why not have war for its own 
sake? If it be the only hero maker; if the 
national spirit would degenerate in its ab- 
sence; if it be the only mainspring of racial 
evolution, why not organize a general congress 



Arrested Development 107 

whose jurisdiction shall cover all civilized peo- 
ple, and whose business it shall be to arrange 
for a war at stated intervals between selected 
nations, to continue during a prescribed num- 
ber of months? This is good political econ- 
omy. It would mean sorrow and woe to the 
few, but the welfare of the many would be 
enhanced. It would bring the greatest good 
to the greatest number. And when by judi- 
cious management and timely conflicts one peo- 
ple had grown too strong to find anywhere 
a foeman worthy of their steel, then plan for 
civil strife, foment internecine dissension, or- 
ganize a revolution or two, split a nation 
into hostile camps, turn the sword of brother 
against brother, for this is the way to the 
heights. 

This, however, is not the theory of European 
politics. The mighty armaments are not in- 
tended as agencies of evolution. War may be 
the school of the highest human qualities, the 
nurse of virtue, the gymnasium of racial en- 
ergy, but it is not in the interest of evolution 
and social progress that the nations are armed 
to the teeth. It is a struggle for life, and in- 
stead of fostering the nobler qualities it really 
cripples the individual, makes him but part 
of a machine, posits him in the social organism, 



lo8 Back to Bethlehem 

and limits his sphere of action as a unit. The 
plea of the peoples whose warships are afloat 
and whose soldiers are drilled Is that all these 
things make for peace. Count Muravleff In 
behalf of the Russian Czar announces as the 
purpose of the Peace Congress, ''to accept In 
principle the employment of the good offices 
of mediation and facultative arbitration in 
cases lending themselves thereto, with the ob- 
ject of preventing armed conflicts between 
nations." V/hy all this if war be necessary to 
cultivate the higher qualities of courage and 
self-reliance? The Czar said to the French 
President at a great military review in Saint 
Petersburg, "The Russian army and the 
French army constitute a real brotherhood 
of arms, which we can regard with all the 
greater satisfaction because these Imposing 
forces are not destined to support one an- 
other aggressively, but, on the contrary, to 
strengthen the maintenance of general peace." 
But wherefore all this? If war be necessary 
to prevent reversion to type, why take away 
the occupation of the soldiers and thus inter- 
fere with racial development. 

It Is further claimed that war advances the 
national interests. There Is indeed an almost 
universal sentiment entertained that we owe 



Arrested Development 160 

our national integrity and growth to the sol- 
diers ; that these ought to be the pride as they 
are the creators of the republic. This is the 
contention of a distinguished English general 
who said in public address, 'The glorious pos- 
session which we inherit from our forefathers 
has been built up bit by bit by the glorious 
deeds, by the courage and valor, of her maj- 
esty's army and navy." It would be interesting 
to ask how much of the British empire has 
been built up by the army and navy. Certainly 
not England itself, with its factories, and 
fields, and mines, and shipyards. Certainly 
not the broad domain of Canada, nor the com- 
monwealth of Australia, nor the islands of the 
sea. It is British thrift and not British gun- 
powder, British artisans and shopkeepers and 
explorers and missionaries and not British 
soldiers, that have followed the sun with the 
Union Jack, and girdled the globe with the 
English speech. It is only when the sword 
has been beaten into a plowshare that the des- 
ert is made to blossom as a rose. The sol- 
diers have rather helped to disintegrate the 
work of the mechanics. The United States 
of America might to-day be a part of Great 
Britain if the soldiers could have been held 
off. India would break away in death and 



110 Back to Bethlehem 

ruin if England had only soldiers to depend 
upon. The cartridges furnished by the mili- 
tary department for military purposes and 
greased with lard brought on the Sepoy rebel- 
lion that swept India with a tempest of blood. 
The military raid of Captain Jameson broke 
many a loving heart in England, and dug ten 
thousand graves along the bleak kopjes of 
South Africa. It meant the addition of a new 
province, but most likely this would have hap- 
pened eventually without bloodshed. 

So may it be said of the United States — not 
one inch of territory, not one advantage, gained 
by force of arms but might have been more 
cheaply and more honorably secured by other 
means. This is the testimony of U. S. Grant. 
He writes, ''Though I have been trained as a 
soldier and have participated in many battles, 
there never was a time when, in my opinion, 
some way could not have been found to prevent 
the drawing of the sword" — one of the wisest 
leaders of modern times deprecating his own 
calling ; one great general on record as saying, 
''War is hell ;" another declaring, "War is a 
blunder." Our Revolutionary War was a glo- 
rious struggle — so say school histories and the 
July orators ; but it was merely an outcome of 
the military idea dominant at the court of 



Arrested Development hi 

George III. The war with Mexico was the 
attack of a brigand, who levies tribute because 
he is stronger. The civil war cost eight bil- 
lions of dollars. The total wealth of the eleven 
seceding states was a little over five billions. 
The entire South could have been bought, 
plantations, cotton warehouses, negroes, and 
all, and three billions would have been saved — 
and no reckoning demanded for the slaugh- 
tered thousands, the broken homes, the para- 
lyzed industries, the moral collapse, which 
make grewsome the history of that awful 
struggle. 

When this war closed it left a number of 
delicate problems tmsettled. One of these 
grew out of the equipment of Confederate 
cruisers in English ports. It was suggested 
that this matter be settled by arbitration. 
At once Lord Russell, the Foreign Secretary, 
refused. He maintained that the English peo- 
ple were the sole guardians of their own honor. 
It was a critical moment. The people of the 
United States, though wearied with the long 
strife, realized their strength as never before. 
A splendidly successful general was in the 
presidential chair. But a few months earlier 
fifty thousand men had been ready to start for 
the Mexican frontier to inquire as to the reason 



112 Back to Bethlehem 

for the stay of a French army in the Mexican 
capital, and to suggest that its visit had been 
long enough. A war between England and 
America at this time would have been a strug- 
gle between giants, and if war is good it 
therefore would have been an inestimable ben- 
ediction to the race. But the clear-sighted 
statesmanship of these two Christian nations 
did not indorse this fallacy. England indeed 
felt that fifteen million dollars levied by the 
Court of Arbitration was not an excessive 
price to pay for peace. The fact is that Europe 
pays four million dollars per day on her arma- 
ments in order to prevent war. Nothing con- 
ceivable would so advance the interests of 
Europe and of the world as the assurance that 
war had become an impossibility. It would 
bring the golden age. It would inaugurate 
an industrial millennium. It would quiet much 
of the feverish fluctuation of the market and 
make the poor man's savings safe. 

A school of political economists has held 
that war is a prime factor in civilization ; 
that universal peace would mean social and 
intellectual stagnation; that a peaceful nation 
is a hermit nation; isolation is fatal to prog- 
ress ; a people soon reaches the limit of native 
mental or industrial growth; variety of influ- 



Arrested Development 113 

ence and environment alone can bring the 
largest results and assure the ripest maturity ; 
it is not good for Moab to be at his ease from 
his youth and to settle on his lees — he needs 
to be emptied from vessel to vessel, and may- 
hap go into captivity. There is something 
in this. A casual reading of history would 
seem to establish this theory. War, God's 
enemy, has wrought God's work. "He mak- 
eth the wrath of man to praise him." This 
Saul with fingers of steel and eyes of flame 
is also among the prophets. More than once 
some Jeremiah has cried anew, "O thou sword 
of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be 
quiet ? put up thyself into thy scabbard ; rest, 
and be still ;" and the reply of a stern Provi- 
dence has been, "How can it be quiet, seeing 
the Lord hath given it a charge?" 

Men have fought against oppression and 
prejudice, against the thraldom of tradition 
and the tyranny of caste, and have come into 
the day. The history of liberty is a record of 
battles. Its first great Exponent came to bring 
a sword upon the earth, and its first great 
struggle was against the religious despotism 
of God's chosen people. John Stuart Mill 
was not ashamed to say, "A great crisis in the 
history of liberty seems to me to have come 



114 Back to Bethlehem 

at the cross of Jesus of Nazareth." After 
years of struggle and of experimenting, 
Christian liberty — the other name for human 
liberty — adopted as its champion and protege 
the wild, uncultured, but clean-blooded Saxon, 
the barbarian who held town meetings in the 
depths of the German forests and who ratified 
his laws by the shout of the people and the 
clash of shields. 

Now let us read the history of England 
with this clue and what a luminous record 
it is I It is a log book of evolution. Fifty 
years ago historical records were but little 
more than court records. The rise and fall 
of dynasties, state ceremonies and military 
parades, the scheming of placemen, the in- 
trigues of the back stairs, *'the tedious pomp 
that waits on kings" — all this had been digni- 
fied with the name of history. Only in recent 
years has Green proposed A Short History 
of the English People, or Aubrey written The 
Rise and Growth of the English Nation. Wal- 
ter Scott spent his splendid strength in Mar- 
mion, and The Lords of the Isles, and The 
Lady of the Lake, but Tennyson dares to 
glorify the Charge of the Light Brigade, and 
Kipling touches with wizard pencil the hanging 
of Danny Deever, and makes a place in the 



Arrested Development 115 

national heart and in the national Hall of Fame 
for Tommy Atkins, who is 

"Tommy this an' Tommy that an' 

'Tommy, 'ow's your soul?' 
But it's 'thin red line of 'eroes' when 

The drums begin to roll. 
For it's Tommy this an' Tommy that an' 

'Chuck him out, the brute,' 
But it's 'saviour of 'is country' when 

The guns begin to shoot." 

Little by little the people have come to the 
front. They learned to fight, they learned to 
read, they learned to vote. 

America has taken up the task. The War 
of the Revolution was a paradox and a revela- 
tion. It not only made the American people 
free, it made them want to be free. It resolved 
them to be free. Congress decided to raise 
an army to resist the encroachments of Eng- 
land. The same Congress also emphatically 
declared, "We do not mean to dissolve the 
union which has so long and so happily sub- 
sisted" between the English and the American 
peoples. The Declaration of Independence 
was the result, and not the cause, of the war. 
The war itself prepared the nation for the con- 
sequences of the war. The premature, explo- 
sive, declaration of the Scotch-Irish patriots 



ii6 Back to Bethlehem 

of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in- 
vesting the provincial Congress with "all legis- 
lative and executive power," came before any 
powder was burned. But this attracted local 
attention only. Not until the Hessian had 
been hired, and Boston had fallen into hostile 
hands, and a British fleet had pounded the 
palmetto logs of Fort Moultrie for ten long 
hours — only then was the old Statehouse bell 
struck, and a new creed sent forth as the rally- 
ing cry for the fighting millions of the race. 

The war between the states was to defend 
the Constitution. It resulted in the emancipa- 
tion of the negro. The Federal armies met 
with defeat until they got into the divine plan. 
God had no use for the armies of the North 
except as champions of the whole Declaration 
of Independence, and exponents of liberty. 
The end of 1862 was the dark period of the 
rebellion. But 1863 begun with a call for three 
times three hundred thousand men — and the 
Emancipation Proclamation. Both were held 
to be military necessities, but the latter was 
the moral condition which gave dignity and 
vigor to the former. This Proclamation lifted 
the conflict from the low ground of a struggle 
between factions, to a grapple of the forces 
that make for human good or ill. The North- 



Arrested Development 117 

ern armies, without realizing it, were fighting 
for progress, for evolution, for to-morrow. 
The emancipation of the bondman was only an 
incident, only the local form in which the 
world-old struggle had materialized. It was 
the next step upward, and this step was taken 
over the bodies of the heroic Federal and Con- 
federate dead. 

Now, all this may be true. But times are 
changing. The old methods are crass and 
brutal. The king who orders a batch of pris- 
oners beheaded to make divertisement for his 
tufthunters and court parasites belongs to the 
ape and elephant stage of evolution. The 
tribal clans that need to try conclusions on the 
battlefield in order to settle some question of 
polity or territory or international etiquette 
are only overgrown prizefighters. The nation 
that needs bloodshed as the condition of its 
best growth, that stagnates unless its flag is 
afield and its soldiers are killing, is out of step, 
and deserves to fall behind and be forgotten. 
Militarism is elemental. It is the Tartar hy- 
postasis which may be discovered by scratch- 
ing a Russian. Not more instinctively does 
the horse smell the battle afar off, and quiver 
at the thunder of the captains and the shout- 
ing, than does man glory in the military 



ii8 Back to Bethlehem 

trappings and warlike parade that mean the 
destruction of his fellow men. King Henry 
at Harfleur was touching a popular chord 
when he said : 

"In peace there is nothing so becomes a man 
As modest stillness and humility. 
But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
Then imitate the action of the tiger." 

Here, then, is the secret of it all. It is a 
symptom of arrested development. The race 
is destined to outgrow this stage or this mani- 
festation. It is on its way to a higher grade 
in the great evolution. Mr. Spencer defines an 
army as a mobilized community, and a com- 
munity as an army at rest. The army stage 
of development precedes the community stage. 
First the hunter state, then the pastoral, then 
the agricultural — this is the scientific order, 
and only in the last is there permanency in 
values and integrity of institutions. 

This transition is not to be made by any 
special form of government. Very early in the 
history of America it was claimed that the 
problem had been solved; that the genius 
of a republic is pacific, and the people would 
seek their best interests by avoiding war as 
self-destructive. Alexander Hamilton showed 



Arrested Development 119 

the fallacy of this claim. He pointed out that 
there had been almost as many popular as 
royal wars. Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Car- 
thage were republics. Yet Sparta was but 
little better than a well regulated camp, and 
Carthage was the aggressor in the war that 
ended in her own destruction. Nor is the 
reform to be effected by the cultivation of 
commerce. Venice sent her trading ships into 
every sea, yet the war flag of this proud little 
island city was as well known as her merchant 
flag. No nation in Europe is more commer- 
cial than Great Britain, and no nation has 
waged more frequent wars. Commerce does 
not prevent war, it merely changes the object 
of war. Men no longer fight for power or 
for glory, but for markets and for mines. 
Napoleon marching to Moscow in order to 
weld Denmark, Sweden, and Warsaw into a 
confederation is succeeded by Lord Roberts 
whose objective is the diamond quarries of 
Kimberley. Not blockade, but open ports, is 
the slogan of our modern war. Hence we must 
look elsewhere for the remedy. Mr. Roose- 
velt has said in one of the reviews, "The great 
political revolutions seem to be about complete, 
and the time of the great social revolutions 
has arrived." There is only one great social 



120 Back to Bethlehem 

revolution that can ever bring universal peace, 
and that is the overthrow of egoism, and the 
supremacy of the Christian faith. ''Only the 
golden rule of Christ can ever bring the golden 
age of man." The evil demon of war will 
yield to no exorcism save that of Jesus of 
Nazareth. When men recognize each other 
as brothers of the same family, when the spirit 
of justice and love are universal, then wars 
will cease, and the trappings of the soldier 
will become a worn-out delusion and a humil- 
iating memory — relics of the primitive man, 
dusty curiosities to place in the museum by 
the side of the stone ax and the witch's duck- 
ing stool, to remind the children that the 
fathers were but little removed from the 

"Dragons of the prime 
That tear each other in their slime." 

Nor need the race lose stamina. The stren- 
uous life may be reached without the hardships 
and self-immolations of militarism. Professor 
William James has found what he calls the 
moral equivalent of war : ''May not voluntarily 
accepted poverty be the 'strenuous life' with- 
out the need of crushing helpless peoples? 
We have lost the power even of imagining 
what the ancient idealization of poverty could 



Arrested Development 121 

have meant: the Hberation from material at- 
tachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier 
indifference, the paying our way by what we 
are or do and not by what we have, the right 
to fling away our life at any moment irre- 
sponsibly — the more athletic trim, in short, 
the moral fighting shape." Here is something 
new and something very old. Men may be 
heroes without brass-buttoned uniforms and 
fierce battle throes. They may transfer the 
campaign to their own souls, and by choosing 
to be poor, or, at any rate, by refusing to "join 
the general scramble and pant of the money- 
making street," may prove themselves born of 
a giant's brood, and may grow a giant's mus- 
cles. The meek who have conquered them- 
selves may inherit a conquered earth. 

Be that as it may, a new spirit of altruism is 
abroad in the world, and more than once has 
it settled an ugly difference. Very fresh is the 
memory of the demand made by Mr. Cleve- 
land for arbitration in the issue between Eng- 
land and Venezuela. Lord Salisbury at first 
declared against this method of settlement. It 
was supposed at the time that this gentleman 
was driven to a change of policy by the menac- 
ing tone of American sentiment. The prime 
minister who has at call five hundred and 



122 Back to Bethlehem 

eighty-one swift warships is not easily intim- 
idated. It was EngHsh sentiment rather than 
American that brought Lord Sahsbury to 
terms. The Enghsh people would overthrow 
any government that insisted upon an unnec- 
essary war between kindred. The heir to the 
English throne cabled that he "hoped and be- 
lieved the question would be peaceably set- 
tled." Behind this cablegram was the queen, 
and behind the queen was the Christian fel- 
lowship that binds together the "lords of the 
strong young land" and the "lords of the sea." 
But even the Court of Arbitration has failed 
thus far. In its last instance it has helped 
to emphasize the war spirit.^ In deciding the 
case against Venezuela it has given preference 
to those creditors who back their claims by 
force. It has put a premium upon warships. 
It suggests that a claimant who bullies is more 
likely to win consideration, even of a court 
organized in the interests of peace. The dra- 
matic German emperor stood in Jerusalem and 
pompously exclaimed, "As was done nearly 
two thousand years ago, so to-day shall I ring 
out the cry voicing my ardent hope to all, 
^Peace on earth !' " Yet this same complacent 
pacificator calls the proposed disarmament of 

* Venezuela vs. the European Powers. 



Arrested Development 123 

Europe "a fantastical idea." ''Germany cannot 
consent to impair her finest instrument of 
offense; we can stand the expense," he de- 
clares. The Czar of all the Russias calls for 
a world parliament tending toward world arbi- 
tration; yet a great war breaks out during 
a session of this court because of Russia's 
Machiavelian diplomacy and brutal aggres- 
sions, and the president of the council, a sub- 
ject of the Czar, offers gratuitous insult to an 
honorable foe. 

Until Jesus Christ become the head of the 
house, armies will go on drilling and navies 
will go on building. Some day the King 
who came as Shiloh, who was promised as 
Prince of Peace, in whose reign the swords 
were to be beaten into pruning forks, will 
come to his own. The world is drifting back 
to Bethlehem. The New England prophetess 
who "read the fiery gospel writ in burnished 
rows of steel" has been able to see other signs 
of the times. Her Battle Hymn kept measure 
and beat with the tramp of armies and the 
march of truth. Her white-hot words were 
sung again and again about "the watch fires 
of a hundred circling camps." But she has 
had other visions. It was she who helped to 
organize the Woman's Peace Association, and 



124 Back to Bethlehem 

it was she who, as a reaction from the carte 
and tierce of the Battle Hymn, has written in 
her old age: 

"Let the crimson flood retreat ! 

Blended in the Arc of Love 
Let the flags of nations meet; 
Bind the raven, loose the dove. 

"Blinding passion is subdued, 

Men discern their common birth; 
God hath made of kindred blood 
All the peoples of the earth.'* 



VI 
THE PHILANTHROPY OF GOD 



VI 

The Philanthropy of God 

The God of the twentieth century must be 
larger than the God of the first century. He 
has greater responsibilities and a broader field. 
His duties are immeasurably more complicated 
and the details of his government more elab- 
orate and more confusing. Once he was the 
God of heaven and earth and hell, and his 
relation to these was as simple as their rela- 
tion to each other. The earth was created 
first. The heavens were but an adjunct to the 
earth — a curtain resting upon massive pillars 
ranged around the edges of the v/orld; and 
below the earth was the ''hollow place" or hell. 
This was the view taken by the Old Testa- 
ment writers. This is the heavens and the 
earth of which the inspired author speaks in 
Genesis. Indeed, he knew of none other. The 
sun, moon, and stars that came into view on 
the fourth day were created because they were 
necessary to the earth. So they were fixed in 
the overhanging curtain to give light upon the 
earth and to rule over the day and the night. 



128 Back to Bethlehem 

When the earth ceased to be, these heavenly 
bodies will become useless ; and so on that day 
"the heavens shall pass away with a great 
noise," the curtain shall be rolled ''together as 
a scroll," and the stars shall drop out "as a 
falling fig from the fig tree." 

There was a marked complacency about all 
this, and we are prepared for the simplicity of 
God's dealing with man according to the old 
records. It is the most natural thing in the 
world for the Creator to walk in the cool of 
the day in Eden and hold familiar intercourse 
with the man and the woman. He had pre- 
pared this dwelling place for them, and no 
other claim could be as imperative as theirs 
upon his time and attention. The stopping of 
the sun in the midst of a battle between the 
clans that struggled for supremacy in Canaan 
was nothing extraordinary. But little machin- 
ery was involved. A brake applied to a single 
wheel, a few hours' halt of a part of the pro- 
cession, then the whole incident dismissed with 
a paragraph. 

The universe of God is a modern discovery, 
and this discovery has revolutionized the 
world's thinking. The breaking of the earth 
from its moorings, and its cruise around the 
sun, has shaken the old theologies. The swift 



The Philanthropy of God 129 

and measureless flight of the sun with its at- 
tendant planets about a still greater central 
body has shattered a whole system of ancient 
ideas. God's kingdom is now a vast kingdom 
of suns and constellations and nebulae. The 
earth no longer occupies the place of honor. 
In our new humility we are ready to stand 
with Rossetti and the Blessed Damosel on the 
ramparts of heaven which lie 

"Across the flood 

Of ether as a bridge. 
Beneath, the tides of day and night 

With flame and darkness ridge 
The void as low as where the earth 

Spins like a fretful midge." 

The God of this new conception must be a 
larger God. The anthropomorphism of our 
fathers that pictured him with hands and feet 
and eyes, that conceived of him as possessed 
of human passions and weaknesses, cannot 
abide in this light. He must be reclassified and 
rethroned. 

We need also a kinder God than the God 
known to our fathers. The world is kinder 
than it was a hundred years ago and will not 
be satisfied with the Deity of that date. Man's 
conception of God is largely a reflection of 



130 Back to Bethlehem 

his own character. "Thou thotightest that I 
was altogether such an one as thyself" is the 
challenge of the Almighty. Jacob the bar- 
gainer sought to make a bargain with God. 
Moses and Israel stooped to pick up the weap- 
ons of the dead Egyptians that strewed the 
shores of the Red Sea ; and as the hands that 
had been accustomed to the trowel laid hold 
upon the shield, and the fingers that had been 
warped in the use of the spade laid hold upon 
the spear, the people were thrilled with new 
sensations and they sung among themselves, 
''Jehovah is a man of war, Jehovah is his 
name." Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, the 
fighter who conquered Egypt, Arabia, and 
Zidon, and blockaded Tyre, thus bears testi- 
mony to one of his goddesses : "Ishtar, Queen 
of War and Battle, who loves my piety, stood 
by my side. Their line of battle in her rage 
was destroyed. To their army she spake thus : 
'An unsparing deity am I.' " Browning in his 
Caliban upon Setebos has given us the god of 
the monster. Shakespeare has invented Cali- 
ban and Browning has invented his god, fol- 
lowing the lines laid down by the master. 
The god is but a reproduction of the wor- 
shiper ; the god of the monster is a monstrous 
god. 



The Philanthropy of God 131 

"He is strong and Lord. 
Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs 
That march now from the mountain to the sea; 
Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first; 
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 
Say the first straggler that boasts purple spots 
Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off: 
Say this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, 
And two worms he whose nippers end in red, 
As it likes me each time, I do : so He." 

Caliban was a pretty good Calvinist. He did 
not dodge the logical consequences of his 
creed. But men are not monsters. We are 
living in an age of help and brotherliness. We 
shelve the treatise on theology which gives two 
pages to heaven and eighty pages to hell, as 
Dr. Shedd has done. We repudiate Samuel's 
dealing with Agag the Amalekite whom he 
hacked to pieces for the glory of God, or the 
treachery of Jael the Kenite who murdered 
Sisera in her tent, just as we abhor the Te 
Deum of Gregory XIII in honor of Saint 
Bartholomew, or shudder at the casuistry of 
the ancient princes of Mexico, who gave notice 
occasionally that the gods were hungry and 
therefore they must go to war to secure pris- 
oners on whom these same gods might break 
their fast. 

The question of divine sovereignty is not 



132 Back to Bethlekem 

as important now as the question of the divine 
paternity. We are more interested in heaven 
than in hell ; and more concerned about a re- 
deemed and evenly balanced earth than in 
either. We are looking for large things in 
God, for we have found humanity to be large 
and the predication of a Father God makes 
all men brothers. We have broken with the 
ancient creeds that localized God. The old 
formulae that limited his compassion are shat- 
tered. The sun that rises on the evil and the 
good is God's sun. The rain that falls out 
of God's skies makes no discrimination be- 
tween the fields of the just and the unjust. 
Even our theology has joined the protest of 
the Quaker poet against the harsh dictum of 
an ironclad faith: 

"I walk with bare hushed feet the ground 
Ye tread with boldness shod, 
I dare not fix with mete and bound 
The love and power of God. 

"Ye praise his justice, even such 
His pitying love I deem ; 
Ye see a King, I fain would touch 
The robe that has no seam. 

"And thou, O Lord, by whom are seen 

Thy creatures as they be. 
Forgive me if too close I lean 
My human heart on thee." 



The Philanthropy of God 133 

The old ideas of God's awful severity might 
do for the day when a poor man could be put 
in jail for a grocer's bill and his wife and 
children left to starve ; when white slaves 
walked the streets or toiled in the fields with 
their owner's mark branded upon their fore- 
head; when a friendless fallen woman was 
compelled to stand in the pillory wearing the 
infamous scarlet letter ''A." When men were 
harsh they looked for a harsh God. Luther, 
asked whether the blessed in heaven will not 
be saddened by seeing their dearest friends 
tortured in hell, answered : "Not the least in 
the world." Jonathan Edwards declared that 
"the view of the misery of the damned will 
double the ardor of love and gratitude of the 
saints in heaven." Samuel Hopkins taught 
that the sight of hell will be most entertaining 
to those who love God, and will give them the 
highest pleasure. Amid the uncertainties of 
this awful faith they sung the hymn which is 
called "Desperate Resolution," with is implied 
impeachment of the divine fidelity and com- 
passion : 

"Perhaps he will admit my plea, 
Perhaps will hear my prayer; 
But if I perish I will pray, 
And perish only there." 



134 Back to Bethlehem 

What an alternative is suggested in these 
words, and how they measure the conception 
of God ! And yet our fathers sung this stanza 
with earnest zeal, and it is still in the Hymnal ! 
It is interesting to note the growth of man's 
conception of the love and largeness of God. 
He has not always been Love. This is verily 
his "new best name," and this is peculiar to 
Christianity. Christian preachers are the only 
gospel preachers. There is no good news in 
any other faith. Our forefathers worshiped 
the most bloodthirsty deities. The earth began 
in slaughter and ruin. The giant Ymir was 
produced by the drops of moisture falling into 
the void from melted ice and snow. He was 
slain by Odin, and of his blood the seas were 
made, out of his hair the trees, out of his bones 
the hills. His skull became the vault of heaven 
and his scattered brains became the clouds. The 
world was a vast mausoleum. The horror and 
shadow of death were upon creation. Thor 
and his colleagues contend with Fire, run 
titanic races with Thought, seek to drink dry 
the sea, and wrestle with Old Age. It is ele- 
mental and huge. The gods are drunken rev- 
elers and Valhalla is the boisterous taproom of 
a country tavern. Such gods were feared; 
they were not loved or respected. Xenophanes 



The Philanthropy of God 135 

accuses Homer of having ascribed to the gods 
everything that is disgraceful among men. 
Diogones Laertius relates of Pythagoras that 
when he descended to the shades below he saw 
the soul of Hesiod bound to a pillar of brass 
and gnashing his teeth, and Homer suspended 
on a tree and surrounded by serpents, as 
punishment for the things they had said of 
the gods. These poets but voiced the popular 
conception. There was no dependence to be 
placed in the gods, and these interpreters of 
the age said so. They were the people's poets, 
and they but spoke for the people. 

Then came the deity who was interested in 
a single race. This was an early phase of the- 
ology. It has been a tenet of many faiths. A 
few nations like the Romans have built their 
Pantheon and have given a welcome to deities 
not to the manner born. But in the case of 
the Roman it was a shrewd stroke of policy 
to alientate none, to conciliate all ; to ostracize 
only such faiths as the Christian faith, and be- 
cause it seemed to be the enemy of all. The 
rule, however, was to elect some deity and to 
stick to him, or mayhap to hold with persist- 
ent consoling confidence that this deity had 
chosen the people and had for evermore be- 
come responsible for them. It was this which 



136 Back to Bethlehem 

gave special horror to the plagues of Egypt. 
Here was a battle of the gods. Jehovah the 
god of Israel had crossed into Egypt and had 
taken the national gods by the throat. Was 
the Nile worshiped as the Giver of life? This 
new deity filled it from brink to brink with 
blood. Look to it, Apis, whose temple is richer 
than a king's palace, and whose tomb is grand 
with mausoleum and carven stone. The mur- 
rain has invaded thy territory, and even thou 
art not immune ! ''Upon their gods also Jeho- 
vah executed judgment." 

The theory of divine favoritism was Israel's 
faith from the beginning. Undoubtedly this 
people were the special wards of Jehovah. 
He had entered the lists as their champion 
against all comers. To be sure, they did 
not at once realize the meaning and the 
magnitude of this. He was only one among 
many, and the event must prove whether they 
were fortunate or unfortunate in the choice 
of guardian. They still gave place and power 
to other deities. So when the Ammonite 
threatened Israel with war because of land 
robbery Jephthah justified his people by de- 
claring that the land had been given by the 
national deity: "Wilt thou not possess that 
which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to pos- 



The Philanthropy of God 137 

sess? So whomsoever Jehovah our God shall 
drive out from before us, them will we pos- 
sess" (Judg. II. 24). It was the argumentum 
ad hominem, and most probably Jephthah 
spoke as respectfully of the god of their dis- 
tant kinsmen as he expected them to speak of 
his. 

Slowly did it dawn upon Israel that their 
God was supreme, and that their position was 
favored beyond all comparison in having been 
chosen by such a being. This they realized 
eventually. But never did they seem to under- 
stand the purpose of this election. They were 
to be a royal priesthood ; true, but they were 
to hold that priesthood for the sake of others. 
They were to be a peculiar people, but that 
other peoples might receive the light through 
them. They were the chosen famil)^ of Abra- 
ham, but very early in his dealings did Jeho- 
vah declare that in them should all families 
of the earth be blessed. All this, however, was 
beyond their range. They built the temple at 
Jerusalem and established bounds beyond 
which no Gentile dared go on pain of death; 
they established artificial distinctions of clean 
and unclean and held it pollution to sit at 
meat with the outclassed or the stranger. 
Then they made the sad blunder of thinking 



138 Back to Bethlehem 

that the rules prescribed by God to teach his 
hohness were intended to emphasize their own 
sanctity and superiority. So they became a 
nation of rehgious aristocrats, imperious and 
insolent, refusing to bear even the divine mes- 
sage to Nineveh, or to minister to the uncir- 
cumcised save at the peremptory command of 
God. 

They crucified Jesus not only because he 
claimed to be the Son of God, but also because 
he claimed to be the Saviour of men. Pilate 
was pleased to inscribe over his head the 
legend, "King of the Jews," and the priests 
demanded that it be changed to, "He said he 
was King of the Jews." But this was not the 
contention. Because he would not be King 
of the Jews alone; because he declared that 
they should come in from the north and the 
south and sit down with Abraham ; because 
he said, "If I be lifted up I will draw all men 
unto me" — this is why they crucified him. 

Next in order comes the idea that God was 
especially interested in a single class of in- 
dividuals. Christianity set out to teach uni- 
versal love. It was not now a nation, but a 
race; not now a little province, but a world. 
The great truth had come. Mankind would 
soon enter into its heritage. The Jordan of 



The Philanthropy of God 139 

divine love had overflowed its banks and was 
sweeping over all the thirsty valleys and fer- 
tilizing the wide and sterile deserts of human 
life — "Go ye therefore, and disciple all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." But again 
did man blunder. Baptism, given as an ini- 
tiatory rite, was made an imperative condition. 
To be sure, every nation and tribe and tongue 
were to be the recipients, but the church had 
become the treasury of the covenanted mer- 
cies, the guardian of the everlasting love of 
God, and the church disposed of these things 
according to fixed rules. There was no sal- 
vation independent of the rites of the church. 
The priest by withholding baptism could with- 
hold heaven. Dante voices the popular belief. 
On entering the first circle he discovers vast 
multitudes of men, women, and children. His 
guide explains: 

"Ere thou pass 
Farther I would thou know that these of sin 
Were blameless. And if aught they merited, 
It profits not, since baptism was not theirs, 
The portal to thy faith. . . . 

Some grief assailed 
My heart at hearing this; for well I knew 
Suspended in that limbo many a soul 
Of mighty worth." 



140 Back to Bethlehem 

"How, then, could he receive baptism?" asks 
the Princess Danuta in the Knights of the 
Cross, in reference to Walgierz, who had done 
only what was acknowledged to be right, and 
yet who was punished in the next world. ''He 
could not be baptized, and that is exactly why 
he was sent to hell to endure eternal tortures," 
answered the monk with authority. Sienkie- 
wicz is writing history. He is giving utterance 
not only to popular belief, but to formal 
teaching. The ecclesiastical dictum on this 
subject is not hard to find. The Council of 
Trent assembled by the order of Paul HI and 
the sword of Charles V declared, "Whosoever 
shall affirm that baptism is indifferent, that is, 
not necessary to salvation, let him be anath- 
ema." The French ambassador is said to have 
protested against the Pope's sending "the Holy 
Spirit in a traveling bag from Rome to Trent." 
The church indicated its will to the council 
and the council set up bounds to the mercy of 
God. There was only one kingdom of grace 
and only one door into the kingdom ; and at 
this door stood the priest with the baptismal 
ewer in his hand, and entrance was possible 
by means of this open sesame only. Of any 
nationality, from any sphere of life, represent- 
ing any grade of evil, it mattered nothing; 



The Philanthropy of God 141 

there was room within on compHance with the 
simple conditions. A few drops of water made 
the Ethiop white. A shallow form mumbled 
by a sleepy priest, or flippantly rehearsed by 
one whose dinner was interrupted and whose 
mind was upon the fleshpots he had left, and 
all distinctions were abolished and they that 
were afar off were brought nigh. But there 
must be water and there must be this form of 
words, else God could not reach and save. 

Once more there is a move forward. The 
old religion is reformed, the old creeds regen- 
erated. We now see God breaking down these 
barriers. His love can no longer be monop- 
olized by a single class, nor retailed by a sys- 
tem of ecclesiastical brokerage. Even as the 
church proved itself unable to suppress inquiry 
or to strangle progress, so it proved itself unfit 
to be the custodian of saving grace. Men 
found God outside of Rome and died trium- 
phant in spite of withheld sacrament. But alas 
for human conceptions of the divine ! How 
hardly is it possible for humanity to "reflect 
as in a glass the glory of the Lord" ! Calvinism 
succeeded Romanism — a distinct advance, but 
still amazingly and pitifully inadequate: elec- 
tion now instead of baptism ; no more distinc- 
tions of blood, no more bounds set up by man. 



14^ Back to Bethlehem 

no more monopoly of grace; it is now God 
choosing whom he will love and save, and that 
irrespective of human conditions or conven- 
tional forms. But it is God choosing! It is 
love discriminate. It is, to be sure, a great 
exultant river of divine benevolence, making 
the valleys to rejoice and bearing on its bosom 
the commerce of empires ; but it is a river, and 
a river has banks, and beyond its banks is 
desert. 

On the square in front of the Hotel de Ville, 
Geneva, they burned Rousseau's Contrat So- 
cial, which based all government on the con- 
sent of the governed, and which stored the 
dynamite for the French Revolution. There 
they burned Emile also, which laid the founda- 
tion for Pestalozzi and Froebel and modern 
elementary education. On an island in the 
midst of the city they have builded the radical 
thinker a monument and piled his arms with 
books. In a dark, gloomy house on a dark, 
cheerless street there lived in the same Geneva 
the man who held modern theology by the 
throat for generations, and whose influence has 
not yet passed. Rousseau preached the rights 
of man; Calvin preached the sovereignty of 
God. Rousseau magnified the human, but he 
was ahead of his time ; Calvin magnified the 



The Philanthropy of God 143 

divine, but he misinterpreted it. John Calvin 
misunderstood the purposes of God, minimized 
the grace of God, Hmited the love of God. 
Yet for all that he was one of the milestones 
in the way along which journeyed the world 
to the knowledge of the truth. The world 
was learning — very slowly, perhaps, but it was 
learning. God's love is so great, so marvelous, 
so unexpected that it could not all be grasped 
at once. Only by these slow processes could 
the whole truth be apprehended. The sun was 
rising but there was much of dimness and haze 
about the dawn. But the day was at hand. 
Deliverance is to come out of Holland. A 
gigantic reaction from the harsh theories of 
Calvin is imminent. Young James Arminius, 
looking upon the ruins of his native village, 
and dropping his tears upon the silent face of 
his mother murdered by the Spaniards, is pre- 
paring to grapple with the horrible creed 
which logically makes God the author of sin. 
He is not ready to believe that the great heav- 
enly Father has deliberately broken his heart. 
Called to reply to the layman Koornhert, who 
has been making dangerous attacks upon the 
decrees of God, he finds himself in sympathy 
with the new teaching. From that time until 
the end he stood for the Love of God. To his 



144 Back to Bethlehem 

mind Jesus Christ died for all men and for 
every man. God is the Universal Father, and 
only can a man lose the benefits of salvation 
by his own choice. This glorious truth, taught 
in the gospels, preached unto the Gentiles, be- 
came the rallying cry of the Wesleys and their 
associates. This is the outlook to-day. Cal- 
vinism has died hard. It captured one branch 
even of Wesley's fellow workers. It has 
lurked more or less perceptibly in much of the 
best thinking of late years. It may still be 
found in one guise or another in the pulpit 
and the pew. But it is doomed. We are 
changing our mental and theological attitude. 
Not that man is any the less sinful and help- 
less and undone, but God is more intent to 
save. Not that law is any the less severe, but 
love is more pervasive and alert. 

We are ready to believe that there is no reli- 
gious scheme without its gleam of truth. The 
wildest farrago of superstition, manifesting 
itself in horrible cruelties, or reeking with sac- 
rifice, has somewhere in its mysterious recesses 
a right and a reason. God is speaking, and 
the poor, age-darkened, ignorant soul is strug- 
gling to understand and interpret his voice. 
Side by side on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel 
appear the Hebrew prophets and the heathen 



The Philanthropy of God 145 

Sibyls, both to represent inspiration. The 
mighty Angelo preached a mighty truth in the 
Vatican, a truth which some day will over- 
throw the Vatican; that is, the catholicity of 
faith ; the nearness of God ; the Spirit of God 
within the spirit of man and claiming all 
humanity as belonging to him. "Whom there- 
fore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto 
you." 

"God is in all that liberates and lifts, 
In all that humbles, sweetens, and controls." 

Wherever men are true and noble ; wherever 
there is a kindly deed or helpful word, there 
is God. We did not always think so. Some of 
us, still under the spell of the Genevan logician 
and creed maker, do not think so now. We 
thought once upon a time that God attended 
our church only, or that he lived with those 
only who knew their Catechism and were 
sound on theologic questions. We expected all 
others to be burned in the next world, so we 
even ventured to burn a few in this world to 
get them accustomed to the fire. But now we 
believe that the man, however savage he may 
be, who loves his little child does so by the 
grace of God; that the woman, however dis- 
solute she may be, who picks up the stray wet 



146 Back to Bethlehem 

kitten out of the gutter and gives it a saucer 
of milk by the fire, is Hstening to the same 
voice in her heart that spoke to the woman 
by the well in Samaria, or that greeted Mary 
on Easter morning. 

We do not speak so much about man seeking 
God as about God seeking man. The Divine 
Figure standing at the door and knocking is 
the type of this new school of thought. This 
is no longer pathetic so much as it is charac- 
teristic. The three parables in Luke 15 are 
bound into one by a thread of gold. The first 
is not the parable of the lost sheep, though our 
stately King James has called it so for four 
centuries ; it is the parable of the tender shep- 
herd. The second is not the parable of the 
lost coin, but the parable of the anxious house- 
keeper. The third is not the parable of the 
prodigal son, but the parable of the bereaved 
Father. It is God's attitude that is empha- 
sized in them all, not the attitude of man. It 
is the truth as Jesus sees it and as we are 
learning to see it too. We are harking back 
to the old dispensation and are remembering 
that God said as early as the Isaiah prophe- 
cies, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy 
transgressions for mine own sake." 

It is a large day in which we live, and the 



The Philanthropy of God 147 

sun that makes the hght and glory of this new 
day is the growing apprehension of the mar- 
velous fact that thoughtless though we may be 
like the wandering sheep, or helpless like the 
lost coin, or degenerate and unfilial like the 
younger son, the infinite God changes not his 
heart toward us, but is bending every energy 
to succor and to save. The old prophets and 
seers delighted in painting God with a large, 
free hand. There was the roll of thunder and 
the sweep of storm in their descriptions. It 
was thus they conceived of him, and it was by 
such lofty conceptions they expected to arouse 
the interest and strengthen the faith of the 
people. 

''Who hath measured the waters in the hol- 
low of his hand, and meted out heaven with 
a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth 
in a measure, and weighed the mountains in 
scales, and the hills in a balance? . . . Have 
ye not known ? have ye not heard ? hath it not 
been told you from the beginning? have ye 
not understood from the foundations of the 
earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of 
the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as 
grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens 
as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent 
to dwell in. . . . Lift up your eyes on high. 



148 Back to Bethlehem 

and behold who hath created these things, 
that bringeth out their host by number: he 
calleth them all by their names." 

These were the words with which the 
prophet sought to comfort the people. This 
was the "good tidings" that was brought to 
Zion on account of which Zion was called 
upon to rejoice. To-day such appeals daze and 
bewilder us. The universe has grown so large, 
the boundaries of creation so remote, the heav- 
ens that once declared the glory of God are 
now so crowded with might and mystery, the 
immensities of space so overshadowing and 
oppressive, that we are ready to say the God 
who upholds all this is too large, and his 
thoughts are not my thoughts and there can 
be no place for me in his majestic plan. But 
Jesus the Son of God seemed anxious to meet 
these very problems. He seemed to know 
they were coming. "Are not two sparrows 
sold for a farthing? and not one of them is 
forgotten before God." 

He looks after the grass of the field, the 
lily that toils not nor spins, and the birds that 
are without storehouse or barn. He takes time 
to note the thorns in the flesh; to look into 
the cruse of oil to see if it is empty. The tele- 
scope drags us along through immensities and 



The Philanthropy of God 149 

infinities until with faltering faith we look 
across an eternity toward a dim, inaccessible 
God; but the microscope shows us the ex- 
quisite gilded feathers on the butterfly's wing, 
the busy, well-regulated colony that builds its 
palaces in a drop of water, and we are com- 
forted. The lily of the field knows as much 
about God as does the planet Jupiter. Yea, the 
little bird that perches for the night on the 
swaying twig, under the deep heaven of 
worlds, is possessed with sweetest content, for 
the Maker of the ends of the earth has put out 
his hand over the tiny waif and under his palm 
does it sleep. 



VII 

THE SERVICE OF GOD 



VII 

The Service of God 

We are being told in these later days that 
our chief business in this world is to grow a 
soul ; not to cultivate farms, nor to build wire- 
less stations, nor to write books ; not to formu- 
late creeds, nor to crystallize great truths and 
preserve them in portable shape for the benefit 
of the crowd, and so preserve the faith once 
delivered to the fathers ; not even to get our- 
selves ready for the white robe and the harp 
of gold: but rather to make ourselves; in pa- 
tience to acquire a soul; to seek such equip- 
ment as shall enable us in the best sense to 
*'serve the present age." Thus Socrates, who 
was one of the heralds of this century, de- 
clares, "I do nothing but go about persuading 
you all not to take thought for your persons or 
your properties, but first and chiefly to care 
about the greatest improvement of your souls." 
Carlyle writes amid the shadows and limita- 
tions of bodily unhealth, ''A soul in right 
health, it is the thing above all others to be 
prayed for." 

Now come the Christian teachers, and they 



154 Back to Bethlehem 

tell us that this may be reached by the service 
of God. "If thou return to the Almighty," 
they say with the Temanite philosopher who 
had lost his faith in Job, "thou shalt be built 
up." We speak more or less vaguely of the 
kingdom of God. It represents collectively 
the service of God as rendered by individuals. 
It is according to Harnack "the rule of the 
holy God in the hearts of individuals, and is 
a question of God and. the soul." 

But the kingdom of God is an historic fact. 
It is not a state of mind, not an imaginary 
golden age in the past nor a Utopia in the 
future. There was a time when it did not 
exist. To be sure, we find germs of it in the 
old dispensation. The word which was spoken 
by the Son was aforetime more or less 
vaguely spoken by the prophets. The passover 
feast celebrating the death of the lamb and 
the deliverance of Israel was at its height when 
the Lamb of God was nailed to the cross. 
Pentecost, the feast of the harvest, was being 
observed when the Holy Spirit came upon the 
disciples and three thousand souls were con- 
verted as the first fruits of this new move- 
ment. Thus came the kingdom of God into the 
world like Minerva, armed and self-sufficient, 
from the brow of Jove ; at the same time tra- 



The Service of God 155 

clng its lineage back to the old dispensation, 
in which prophets had spoken and poets had 
sung and the Spirit of God had fired the hearts 
of men. 

Nor did this scheme begin in myth. It is 
not a child of the world's midnight. It did 
not come like Mohammedanism to the desert 
and lay his hand upon a simple wandering 
superstitious people. Its voice was not heard 
first amid the dense forests and dark fiords 
of the barbaric north as in the case of the old 
Norse mythology. The world's best centuries 
greeted its birth. It stood in Athens opposite 
the Dionysiac Theater, where twenty thousand 
people sat absorbed in plays that were nothing 
less than profound philosophical treatises, and 
that would empty an American theater in half 
an hour. Rome was in a blaze of intellectual 
light. Cicero reproduced the speculations of 
the Greek philosophers. One emperor, Nero, 
aspired to be a popular poet, another, Marcus 
Aurelius, is one of the sages whose high, 
clean thoughts are read by the best people to- 
day. If Christianity had been a delusion it 
would have been strangled in its cradle. Its 
appeal was to well known facts. It said with 
Paul before Agrippa, "These things were not 
done in a corner." And so we can walk back 



156 Back to Bethlehem 

in history along a well marked path and can 
say, "Here, at this time and at this place, 
Christianity began." We may stand on the 
hillside at Bethlehem and say, ''Here was the 
beginning, and here the angels came to sing 
the opening chorus of this world-wide and age- 
long anthem." We may wander even now in 
the old Garden beyond Kedron where 

"Into the woods my Master went, 
Clean forspent, clean forspent. 
Into the woods my Master came, 
Forspent with love and shame. 
But the olives they were not blind to him ; 
The little gray leaves were kind to him ; 
The thorn tree had a mind to him 
When into the woods he came." 

We may climb the green hill far away just 
outside the city gate and with uncovered head 
and full heart may whisper, ''Here on this soil 
the blood drops fell that were to wash away 
the sin of the world." Here came forth from 
this old tomb at the foot of the hill a new 
morning, and all the universe knew that death 
was swallowed up in victory. 

The kingdom of God is a present fact; not 
the government of God over the universe. He 
is King and there is none beside him. But the 
stars in their courses, and the mountains that 



The Service of God 157 

melt, and the hail stones and the snow on 
Hermon are not parts of this kingdom of 
heaven. It is not God's moral government of 
man, dealing ont justice, visiting transgression 
with the rod and iniquity with stripes, but 
showing mercy unto thousands who obey the 
law. The kingdom means something more. 
It is summed up in its two laws : "Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy strength," 
and *'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
Here is an old stone altar down in Mexico 
in the midst of ashes and charred fragments 
of bones, and we say the ancient Aztecs were 
religious and offered sacrifices to the gods. 
Inside the great pyramid there are proportions 
and measurements, and we say the early Egyp- 
tians were astronomers and read the skies 
and calculated the times and the seasons. Go 
into the silversmiths' bazaar at Damascus and 
climb to the roof, and yonder on the wall 
of the great mosque may be read in Greek, 
''Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting 
kingdom, and thy dominion endureth through- 
out all generations." For twelve hundred years 
this building has been used for Moslem wor- 
ship; yet these words cut deep in the stone 
prove that once this building was a Christian 
temple and this city was a Christian city, 



158 Back to Bethlehem 

though now given up to the enemies of Christ. 
So these verses about the love of God and 
love for our neighbor are the shibboleth of 
this new creed, the great seal of this new king- 
dom, and they differentiate it from all other 
faiths that have challenged the confidence of 
the race. 

It cannot be said that these are new 
words. Love for the neighbor had been com- 
mended centuries before the kingdom was 
born. But who was meant by the neighbor in 
Leviticus? The man across the street, of the 
same blood and religion. Whom did Jesus 
mean? The parable of the Good Samaritan 
teaches that our neighbor according to this 
new classification is any man who may need 
us, any who may be in trouble, any whom he 
may help, though he be unworthy and dis- 
agreeable, and though he live on the other side 
of the globe. 

And this kingdom is to be within us; not 
in outward deeds, in the march of armies, the 
building of churches, the raising of money. 

"I sent my soul into the invisible, 
Some letter of the after life to spell. 
And after many days my soul returned 
And said, 'Behold myself am heaven and hell.* " 

Omar Khayyam. 



The Service of God 159 

The heart is to be the battle ground and 
the heart is to be the throne. There the King 
is to conquer and there he is to reign. So the 
service of God means a personal relation to 
God— such knowledge of God as makes us love 
him, and love him in such degree that we are 
ready to love those who are made in his image. 
This is a splendid find. Here is the root of 
the matter. God is our Father. He is the 
Universal Father. Therefore Jesus the great 
Elder Brother will help tis to render the lar- 
gest service. Therefore love for all men will 
be an important part of this service. 

It is this which makes the service sure. This 
too is important. The old mariner Martin 
Cockrem, the first Englishman to set foot in 
the New World, according to Westward Ho, 
remembered the time when all England 
thought there was nothing west of Land's 
End except herring. But now, looking around 
upon Drake and John Hawkins and Frobisher, 
he says, "Look to the captains — one's been to 
the Indies and the Spanish Main and the Rus- 
sias and the China Seas and round the Cape 
and around the world of God too, bless his 
holy name." This is all well enough for rest- 
less man looking for new things and planting 
flags on new islands. But when questions of 



i6o Back to Bethlehem 

eternity are at stake we want certainties. The 
soul resents the interrogation point. 

We say, first, that the service of God is a 
sure service because it has been indorsed by 
the Book of God. On every page of the book 
God seems to be giving bond for this Hfe. He 
says, ''This is the way, walk ye in it." He 
declares that whatsoever is born of God over- 
cometh the world. All manner of figures are 
used to indicate the absolute certainty of this 
venture. The righteous shall be as trees 
planted by the rivers of water, with glossy 
leaf and purpling fruit; as Mount Zion which 
cannot be moved. They shall renew their 
strength and mount up as eagles. A chaotic 
but radiant flood of confused but splendid 
rhetoric to show the wisdom of righteousness 
and the security of the righteous. These are 
the words of a Book which claims to be able 
to make us wise unto salvation. This is the 
chart that marks out the safe places. Here 
speaks a voice which assumes to be supremest 
authority. 

But how is the Book indorsed? If the Bible 
goes security for God who will go security 
for the Bible ? The Romanist meets that ques- 
tion with ease. He has an infallible Pope 
and council. The Protestant does not so easily 



The Service of God i6i 

surrender his right to think. So with him the 
Bible must be proved as other books are 
proved. It was reason which decided in the 
fourth century how many and what books 
should be in the canon, and it is reason which 
to-day when properly safeguarded must give 
its indorsement to the holy volume. When 
Copernicus declared that the earth moved 
about the sun and swung in a great orbit 
through the stars it was not at once accepted. 
The earth itself journeying down the heavens 
established the contention of the great astron- 
omer. Sir John Mandeville wrote a book 
seventy years before Columbus was born in 
which he declared that "The lond and the 
See ben of rownde schapp and forme, . . . 
and men myghte go be Schippe alle aboute 
the World, and aboven and benethen." Yet 
for scores of years sailors were afraid to steer 
too far into the west for fear they would reach 
the edge and so fall off. Only the tremendous 
facts in the case, the discovery of America, 
the mighty stretch of sea room as ships pushed 
out into the Pacific, and on around the Cape 
of Good Hope and back with eager haste 
into the familiar Atlantic — only this gave the 
seal of authority to the strange words of the 
ancient traveler. 



i62 Back to Bethlehem 

The Bible must be its own advocate and 
witness. We have revised our apologetics 
in the later years. The old arguments are 
out of date. Bishop Butler in his redoubtable 
Analogy staked the integrity of the Bible upon 
miracles. Christianity, he claims, was first 
received upon the allegation of miracles, and 
is thus distinguished from all other faiths. 
Paley argues from design in nature, and thus 
proves the existence and wisdom of God. But 
the world has grown since these knight- 
errants went forth to war. We have lost our 
definition of the word "miracle." The bound- 
aries of the supernatural have been pushed 
back, almost annihilated, indeed. We are 
doing every day that which would have been 
a miracle in the days of Chrysostom or Peter 
the Hermit. We are losing the sense of won- 
der. No one knows what will be possible 
to-morrow. We no longer prove the deity of 
Jesus by his miracles. Given his deity, we 
expect the miracles to follow. They be- 
come deductions rather than credentials. 

The broadening of the universe has out- 
lawed the argument from design. We are more 
modest than our fathers were as to the final 
causes. Perhaps the sun was created to give 
us light, but we are not so sure of it since 



The Service of God 163 

we have become acquainted with the family 
of planets, each of which depends upon the 
sun, and have also learned that the sun is but 
one of millions moving on their mysterious 
errands down the skies. We have modified 
our views of efficient cause as well. God is 
not only the great First Cause of the theolog- 
ical schools, but he is an ever-present Power 
manifest in every effect. Paley's famous 
watch did yeoman's service in its day and 
generation, but it is on the shelf now, and it 
will run no more. The Bible deals in state- 
ments of fact. It concerns itself with every- 
day life. It is susceptible of proof or disproof 
every hour of the day. Said Professor Hux- 
ley, "For three centuries this book has been 
woven into the life of all that is best and 
noblest in English history." Coleridge writes, 
''The Bible reaches me in lower depths of my 
soul than any other book." Is the book true? Ask 
the man who goes into sin. Tell him that the 
Bible says that "the wicked are like the trou- 
bled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters 
cast up mire and dirt." Is this not a picture 
of his soul? Ask the man who turns away 
from sin. Tell him that the book says, "The 
ransomed of the Lord shall come with songs 
and everlasting joy upon their heads, and they 



164 Back to Bethlehem 

shall obtain joy and gladness." And he will 
answer, "These are inspired words, for they 
are the words of the soul." 

There is on every luminous page appeal 
to human consciousness. In the spirit's deep 
and solemn chambers the Christian believer 
has met and talked with God. This vision of 
the invisible, this apprehension of the un- 
known, comes in a sudden bewildering burst 
of light and power to some ; to others it comes 
as the morning comes. Nobody can say at this 
moment, "It is night," and the next moment, 
*Tt is morning." At the same time, when the 
morning has fully come and the golden day 
stands squarely and gloriously across the 
eastern skies and reaches its hands to the 
farthest horizon, nobody doubts that the night 
is gone. Talk to the exulting Christian of 
the uncertainties of the Christian faith! Tell 
him that in the very nature of the case there 
can be no apprehension of supernatural things 
— that the idea of God is so vague and ambig- 
uous that there can be no definiteness in reli- 
gious experience ! Ask the radiant world 
when the birds are singing, and the mists are 
rising from the valleys, and the yellow glory 
of the morning is crowning the tall pines 
along the mountain side, if it knows that the 



The Service of God 165 

sun has risen. Ask the orchards that are be- 
ginning to feel the thrill of new life in every 
fiber, the robins that are busy all day long 
looking over last year's nests and scolding to 
each other from tree top to tree top over the 
damages wrought by the winter's storms ; ask 
the grass along the curbstone — ask all these 
if they know that spring is at hand. Ask the 
frightened, sobbing child who wakes up alone 
in the night and cries out in distress, if it 
knows the mother's voice that answers it 
through the dark, and the mother's face 
against which a moment later it lays its baby 
cheek; then ask the Christian whose heart is 
in the keeping of the Most High how he 
knows there is a God, and how he knows 
that this God is interested in him. 

All this is testimony to the written Word. 
It is the language of the Spirit as crystallized 
in the Book that has become the language 
of experience. In fact, there has been no defi- 
nite religious experience that does not in some 
way connect itself with the Bible. "Compare 
the statements given respecting the power of 
the gospel by Jonathan Edwards, by a con- 
verted Greenlander, a Sandwich Islander, and 
a Hottentot, and you will find in them all 
a substantial identity. And their statements 



i66 Back to Bethlehem 

respecting these things have the more force 
because they are not given as testimony, but 
seem rather Hke notes, varying, indeed, in 
fullness and power, which may yet be recog- 
nized as coming from a similar instrument 
touched by a single hand." 

The service of God is certain because 
Christianity has a living Head. Hugh Price 
Hughes has strikingly developed this thought. 
Jesus has met all the world reformers on their 
own ground and has shown his superiority. 
There is much in which they resemble him. 
There comes a time when the greatest of 
them fails. He was a Teacher, we sav. So 
confessed the unconvinced Nicodemus; only 
a Teacher sent from God could do his great 
works. But so was Mohammed, the camel- 
driver of Arabia, and so was Confucius, the 
reformer of China. Jesus was a wonderful 
Example. Holy, harmless, undefiled, separate 
from sinners, his life sheds a clear white light 
upon the centuries. So also was Buddha, the 
light of Asia; so also was Zoroaster. Their 
lives were clean, their hearts were pure, their 
example was exalted. Jesus died for others. 
So did Socrates die that his countrymen might 
have the inspiration of his integrity. So did J 
John Brown. This grizzled visionary, this 



The Service of God 167 

fanatical but fearless revolutionist, set out 
single-handed to defy the civil and military 
power of the United States and to throttle 
the evil of slavery, and died in the end for 
the sake of human liberty. 

Thus far have other teachers and reformers 
walked side by side with the Nazarene Jesus. 
But now they part company. When we say 
that Jesus of Nazareth arose from the dead 
and sitteth at the right hand of God, the living 
Head of the new church he founded, we have 
crossed an eternity, and human helpers and 
human saviours are lost far down the horizon, 
hopelessly out of the race. Christianity is 
not an opinion as to the best way to keep 
the moral law and to get the most out of 
life ; not the history of a man who lived twenty 
centuries ago and of the church that has per- 
petuated his teaching. Christianity is life — 
the life of Jesus Christ, who is himself Life, 
in the heart of the believer. Of course it is 
certain: he is here to testify to its truth. Of 
course it is certain: he is here to walk with 
his followers in the hard ways. Of course it 
is certain: he is here to open wide the door 
into eternal habitations. 

Perhaps there is a better meaning in the old 
question, "What shall it profit a man, if he 



i68 Back to Bethlehem 

shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
soul?" This verse has passed into the stock 
phrases of the strolling evangelist. It sug- 
gests the strain and intensity of the high 
pressure revival service, or the drum and tam- 
bourine of the Salvation Army barracks. 
We are learning nowadays that the man who 
saves his soul is the man who lives the largest 
and fullest life. There is meaning in every 
cloud that comes out of the west, in every 
leaf that turns toward the sun, in every wave 
that whispers along the beach, and it is the 
soul in man that interprets this meaning and 
thrills with a sense of its beauty. Nature 
cannot keep a secret from one who has a right 
to know. She does not try. She lives with 
open window when he is about. She instructs 
every plant and bird and summer stream to 
take him into their confidence. The horse sees 
only the grass of the meadow and knows that 
it is good to eat. The man with a soul sees 
the clover blossoms and hears the dreamy hum 
of the bees and catches the distant clear note 
of the meadow lark or the bobwhite, and the 
meadow becomes a poem. The child who 
seeks to build a better house of his blocks, 
the schoolboy who tries to make a straighter 
mark in his notebook, the student who turns 



The Service of God 169 

another leaf of his Homer and sits up a Httle 
later so that his recitation will be better than 
it was yesterday, these show the working of 
a soul. 

This has exalted nations. It has builded 
cities, and enacted laws, and fostered civiliza- 
tions. The savage who wanted to make his 
stick more effective as a weapon sharpened 
the end. Then he found a bit of pointed 
flint and he used that as a barb. Later, when 
he had iron, this was used in place of flint. 
Since as he has developed he has invented the 
bow, the firelock, then the rifle, all the while 
following an ideal and seeking to realize it. 
The beaver builds the same sort of dam he 
built in the rivers of paradise ; the cell of the 
honeybee in the market yonder is in no sense 
different from that which Samson found in the 
carcass of the lion among the Syrian hills. 
But man knows there are better ways. He 
longs for better things. He sees the top of 
the mountain, and frets that he is as yet far 
down the slopes. He dreams of the ladder 
which Jacob saw, and he knows no reason 
why he as well as the angels may not ascend 
that ladder; indeed, he will not be satisfied 
until he has tried. Salvation is twofold. We 
are to be saved from and we are to be saved to 



170 Back to Bethlehem 

— saved from sin and littleness and atrophy, 
and saved to the fullest and richest life; 
saved, as said in the Prologue, in the Old 
Testament sense by elimination, and saved in 
the New Testament sense of reconstruction 
and evolution. 

We are in danger of loss as never before. 
It is a world of brick and mortar and wheels. 
The sun has no time to paint a thousand 
rainbows in the morning dewdrops, nor to 
linger in golden splendor before he drops 
the crimson curtains of the evening: his busi- 
ness is to set the time for the factory whistle. 
The sparkling little stream from the hillside 
ripples down to the city, for here it expects 
to find men and women who will sit down on 
its banks and children who will wade in its 
happy waters. But it is throttled by an ugly 
dam, jostled into the slimy mill race, and sent 
staggering along to turn the great wheel, for 
there is no place in this bustling world for 
the dilettante and the trifler. What can we 
do? What time has the man who knows 
nothing but his business, who thinks about it 
all day and dreams about it at night, what 
time has he to see visions? The most beauti- 
ful thing in all the world to him is the smoke 
that smells of trade. The bank where the wild 



The Service of God 171 

thyme grows possesses no attraction comp- 
arable with the bank where he makes his de- 
posits. Promissory notes for him, bird notes 
for dreamers. The workman who spends his 
hours in the confusion of shops and amid the 
clash of cogwheels, the woman who drudges 
in the back attic — what time have these for 
the cultivation of the soul? 

And yet for all open, eager hearts there is 
opportunity. Robert Burns following his plow 
on the April morning throws the sod over a 
meadow daisy, and the "wee modest crimson- 
tipped" flower becomes a part of the world's 
treasures. He uproots the nest of a field 
mouse and "the best laid schemes of mice 
and men" becomes a part of the world's liter- 
ature. Longfellow found a revelation in the 
village blacksmith's shop ; Bryant saw poetry 
in the planting of the apple tree ; Kipling 
found inspiration in the rush and roar of the 
battleship Iowa. There is food for the soul if 
we are looking for it. A single high thought, 
a longing desire for better things, a verse of 
Scripture, will open new fields, will show us 
the beauty and the glory in the commonplace, 
will feed the soul and make it grow in spite 
of the struggle and strangle of our sordid 
days. 



t'j2 Back to BETiiLEHEAi 

How, then, will it profit a man if he gain 
the whole world and lose his power to appro^ 
priate and to appreciate? What we receive 
from life depends not so much upon our en- 
vironment as upon our capacity, our soul 
power. The world belongs to the man who 
can receive it. All the beauty and all the 
glory of life come to his door and say, "We 
are yours if you can take us." Here are the 
long crowded shelves of the library — a great 
new populous world; yet how many there are 
who pass by and only remember after they are 
gone the peevish complaint of the Old Testa- 
ment cynic, that of making books there is no 
end. Here is the picture gallery. These mas- 
terpieces do not belong to me. They have cost 
their owner vast sums. But if I am able to 
hold communion v/ith the high souls who put 
on the marvelous coloring, the pictures belong 
more certainly to me than to the man whose 
money bought them and who estimates them 
by the dollars' worth. When God made the 
world beautiful he had in mind those among 
us who can appreciate beauty, and every 
orange tint of sunrise and every amber glow 
of sunset was put there for their benefit. 
They are God's wards and they are nature's 
favorites 



The Service of God 173 

**Who through long days of labor, 
And nights devoid of ease, 
Still hear in their souls the music 
Of wonderful melodies." 

Walk forth, ye chosen ones, pure in heart, 
simple in life, kindly in deed. All things are 
yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's. 



I 



VIII 
THE LAW OF SERVICE 



VIII 

The Law of Service 

At the beginning and at the end of his Hfe 
did Jesus the Jew receive homage from the 
Gentiles. The Magi came from the east to 
kneel at his cradle, the Greeks came from the 
west to gather round his cross. The last act 
of his public ministry, before he entered upon 
the dread passion week, was to give audience 
to the Greeks who came to Philip saying, "Sir, 
we would see Jesus." It is possible that the 
visit of these strangers was of political signifi- 
cance; that, indeed, the Greeks were looking 
for a national deliverer ; that while the Magians 
came bringing gold, frankincense, and m3Trh, 
the delegation that sought an interview on this 
particular day came to offer Jesus a crown. 

There is nothing incongruous in this. Jesus 
of Nazareth was certainly a prominent figure. 
In the eyes of the politics of the day he was 
a coming man. His strange powxr over his 
fellow men was conspicuous. It was not for- 
gotten that centuries before there had been 
veiled, half ambiguous utterances in reference 
to just such a man as he was proving himself 



178 Back to Bethlehem 

to be ; that the government should be upon 
his shoulders; that in his name should the 
Gentiles trust. Startling were the develop- 
ments in Judea, and, more startling yet, Judea 
did not seem to appreciate the situation. The 
man who was winning the admiration of the 
world was suspected and ostracized at home. 
While all eyes were turned hopefully toward 
him his own people were unfriendly and had 
even planned his overthrow. This was the 
world's opportunity; and we can readily un- 
derstand how such an errand as this would 
suggest itself to the alert Greek mind. 

Moreover, it would be in perfect harmony 
with the history of this elect people. At each 
crisis of their national life there had arisen 
a national deliverer. History had again and 
again crystallized about an individual. It was 
a hero-loving race, and there had always been 
heroes when the necessity arose. The Trojan 
War dragged on its dreary length with 
Achilles sulking in his tent. By and by he 
was placated, then Jupiter said to the assem- 
bled gods, according to Homer: 

"Troy must soon be overthrown, 
If uncontrolled Achilles fights alone. 
Assist them, gods, or Ilium's sacred wall 
May fall this day, though fate forbids the fall." 



The Law of Service 179 

The great cloud of Persian invaders had 
found a Miltiades waiting at Marathon, and a 
Leonidas in ambush at Thermopylae. Now 
Macedonia had overrun the peninsula and 
Rome had succeeded Macedonia, and the great 
burning question was, "Who will deliver us 
from Rome?" So came this delegation to the 
celebrated Galilean, to offer him perhaps a 
kingdom and a sword and the opportunity to 
write his name in blood upon the pages of 
history side by side with the military giants 
whose memory was the nation's pride. Then 
said Jesus, "The hour is come that the Son 
of man should be glorified." "You have read 
aright the signs of the times. This is as you 
suspect the crisis [Kplaig) of the world; we 
are on the threshold of a gigantic revolution. 
But you have very naturally misconceived the 
spirit of the hour and the agencies of the revo- 
lution. It is not by life, but by death ; not by 
conquest, but by self-surrender. The weapon 
before which shall go down the turbulences 
and the tyrannies is not an unsheathed sword, 
but an uplifted cross. The world is to be led 
to the feet not of a monarch crowned with 
far-flashing gems, but a friendless, despised, 
fugitive peasant crowned with thorns." 

Here was a new system of political econ- 



i8o Back to Bethlehem 

omy. This was an astonishing view of the 
political situation, and showed that this man 
who was now being interviewed was strangely 
ignorant of human affairs, or that he had 
made some marvelous discoveries not yet re- 
vealed to the race. What a straightforward 
Reformer was Jesus Christ ! How little he 
cared for public sentiment or the majority 
rule or questions of expediency ! What a 
tremendous sensation he would create to-day ; 
how cordially he would be hated and how 
industriously would the party bosses and the 
society leaders sneer at his utopianism! 
Straight through a subject did he penetrate, 
and without any reference to immediate re- 
sults he launched his theories upon the world. 
Nobody was ready for the bewildering 
thesis announced in this interview. We have 
no means of knowing what these Greeks 
thought of the man whose counsel they had 
sought, or of the platform he had outlined. 
The historian is suggestively silent, but Paul 
speaking generally said, ''Christ crucified was 
to the Greeks foolishness." It was not in the 
beaten track, not according to the methods of 
the fathers ; it did not seem the best way 
to secure the most votes and to maintain the 
balance of power. What use had they for 



The Law of Service i8i 

a dead man? They were arranging for a 
triumphal procession, not for a funeral. They 
had more confidence in a scepter than in a 
tomb. They had monuments enough in their 
own classic land, and what good were they? 
What they wanted now was a throne and a 
man seated upon it who could reach one 
hand to the bounds of the east and the other 
to the bounds of the west and bring back 
the ancient glory of this proud and cultured 
race. 

But stay a moment, disappointed and silent 
ambassadors ; have there not already been 
foreglintings of this unique and revolutionary 
idea? A modern poet dares to put in the 
mouth of Prometheus, who challenged Zeus 
to "hurl his blanching lightnings down," these 
strange words — strange because spoken in the 
fret and fury of the awful struggle between 
the king of the gods and the unconquerable 
Titan : 

"True power has never been born of brutish 

strength, 
Nor sweet Truth suckled at the shaggy dugs 
Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunderbolts, 
That quell the darkness for a space, so strong 
As the prevailing patience of meek Light, 
Who with the invincible tenderness of peace 
Wins it to be a portion of herself?" 



i82 Back to Bethlehem 

We would be ready to cry out against the idea 
that "the invincible tenderness of peace" could 
be regarded as a winning force in these old 
days of muscle and of might. But Lowell has 
not made a slip. Other watchers in the night 
had caught a glimpse of the morning. Even 
stern and rugged ^schylus causes this same 
world-giant, Prometheus, to say: 

"Do ye also ask 
What crime it is for which he tortures me? 
That shall be clear before you. When at first 
He filled his father's throne, he instantly 
Made various gifts of glory to the gods, 
And dealt the empire out. Alone of men 
Of miserable men he took no count, 
But yearned to sweep their track off from the world, 
And plant a newer race there. Not a god 
Resisted such desire except myself. 
I dared it, I drew mortals back to light. 
For which wrong I am bent down in these pangs 
Dreadful to suffer." 

Lowell has been reading ^schylus. He has 
discovered a deep, solemn undercurrent in the 
thought of this early and boisterous age. He 
finds a fragment of the gospel of peace and of 
sacrifice in the work of this colossal genius 
who learned his life lessons as a soldier at 
Marathon and as a sailor at Salamis, and who 
marshals gods and demigods and mountains 



The Law of Service 183 

and seas and eddying lightnings upon his sky- 
roofed stage. The Delphian oracle which de- 
clared at the beginning of the Persian War 
that either Sparta or one of her kings must 
fall kept Leonidas at Thermopylae when out- 
flanked by the foe. He, the king of Sparta, 
would die and thus save Sparta. By the crisp 
shores of the northern ocean the same truth 
is taught. Thor, the god of thunder, the son 
of the supreme god and mediator between the 
gods and man, wrestles with the Midgard ser- 
pent which as the symbol of evil lies coiled 
around the world ; beats him to the earth and 
slays him. But Thor gives up his life in the 
struggle. 

And surely this is no new idea to the Jewish 
mind. In the midst of the splendid rhapsody 
of Zion Redeemed, beginning with the fortieth 
chapter of Isaiah, a strange mysterious win- 
ning figure is introduced — the Servant of Je- 
hovah who is commissioned to carry out the 
purposes of God in the world. And through 
the wonderful chapters that follow, this figure 
moves, fairly eclipsing Jehovah in his majesty 
and importance. All the world is acquainted 
with the Servant. His patience, his gentle- 
ness, his mission to the helpless and the lonely, 
his courage ; his sad face set like a flint against 



184 Back to Bethlehem 

his persecutors, yet without form and come- 
liness. This has been written on human 
hearts and has molded human lives. What- 
ever the unknown prophet might have meant 
originally, it is now almost universally con- 
ceded that these words apply to the Messiah. 
And so in this great Book of the olden time 
there are strangely contradictory statements. 
The coming Deliverer is to be called Won- 
derful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Father 
of Eternity, the Prince of Peace; and at the 
same time he is to be "despised and rejected 
of men ; a man of sorrows, and acquainted 
with grief." No wonder the national mind 
was confused and there was expectation more 
or less definite of two Messiahs. The first 
would be the son of Ephraim or Joseph, and 
he would be slain in the war of Gog and 
Magog. The other would be the son of David 
and he would bring the war to a successful 
issue, restore supremacy to Israel, and cause 
all nations to walk in his light. 

The American patriots who signed the 
Declaration of Independence were setting a 
price upon their heads. But an old school his- 
tory used to say that every signature was 
made in a firm, steady hand except that of 
Stephen Hopkins, who had the palsy. John 



The Law of Service 185 

Hancock's large, bold characters were made, 
we are told, so that George III might be able 
to read the name without spectacles. The 
climax of heroism and self-surrender was 
reached when Charles Carroll took the pen. 
For fear there might be uncertainty because 
the name was a familiar one, he wrote it all 
out — "Charles Carroll of Carrollton ;" as much 
as to say, "Here I am, gentlemen; I am the 
man and am ready to take the consequences 
of my action." The old story of the Pom- 
peian Guard belongs to the same gospel of 
self-sacrifice. Vesuvius hurled its avalanche 
of fire over the doomed city. The unofficial, 
irresponsible multitude surged past him fren- 
zied with fear, dizzy with the heave and shud- 
der of the earth. But he was on duty ; he was 
a Roman soldier; and there he stood in the 
whirlwind of death, and there his body was 
found in the ripening of the centuries to show 
how a man can die for a cause which seems 
worthy of his death. 

Here and there, written and unwritten, in 
ancient and modern times, among civilized 
peoples or in the midst of savagery, have been 
hints and suggestions. The God-thought was 
speaking at sundry times and in divers man- 
ners to the fathers. Only by slow process and 



i86 Back to Bethlehem 

through years of training did the real truth 
come home. In the Church of the Capuchins 
at Rome is Guido Reni's Archangel and the 
Devil, symbolic of the triumph of right over 
w^rong. The attitude of the angel is graceful 
and studied and correct. Not a fold of his 
garments is disturbed, not a lock of his flow- 
ing hair is astray. He is trampling upon his 
terrible enemy as he v^ould pose at a social 
function or enjoy a four-o'clock tea. And 
so says Hawthorne's Miriam, who had strug- 
gled and who knew the awful meaning of 
wrong: "The Archangel, how fair he looks 
with his unruffled wings, his unbacked sword, 
and clad in his bright armor and that ex- 
quisitely fitting sky-blue tunic cut in the latest 
paradisaical mode! With what half-scornful 
delicacy he sets his prettily sandaled foot on 
the head of his prostrate foe ! No, no, I could 
have told Guido better. A full third of the 
Archangel's feathers should have been torn 
from his wings. His sword should be broken 
halfway up to the hilt, his armor crushed, his 
robes rent, his breast gory! The battle was 
never such child's play as Guido's dapper 
Archangel seems to have found it." Miriam 
is right; Guido is wrong. The picture is 
false. It does not stir the blood. Let us fes- 



The Law of Service 187 

toon it with honeysuckle and forget-me-nots, 
and hang it in my lady's bower. A recent 
picture by Riviere of Saint George and the 
Dragon preaches a truer gospel. The great 
scaly coils of the monster are wound tight 
about the dying horse. The hero himself 
has fallen faint and breathless, while the 
anxious-faced princess bends over his pros- 
trate form. This tells the story of struggle; 
of right face to face with wrong, and suffering 
in order that wrong may be conquered; of 
sacrifice as the price of salvation ; of remission 
by the shedding of blood. 

The religious instincts and aspirations of 
the world have been full of this great doc- 
trine. The human race, from the day it was 
scattered bewildered and homeless at Babel, 
has been groping its way to Calvary. All the 
sacrifices that have ever been offered upon 
the world's altars, from the lamb in Israel 
to the writhing victim under the knife of the 
Druid priest, or the hapless woman lashed 
upon a high platform at Benin to be devoured 
by vultures, all these have been guideboards 
for the world's following. Some one must 
risk or give up or suffer for the common 
good. And when Jesus the wonder worker, 
the man who trod the waves and stilled the 



i88 Back to Bethlehem 

storm and raised the dead, gave himself into 
the hands of his enemies and became obedi- 
ent to death, even the death of the cross, 
men said after the first bewilderment, "It is 
just what we have been waiting for, just 
what our poets have been singing, and our 
prophets have been promising, and our hearts 
have been hoping," The Cross becomes the 
key to all the black problems of human fail- 
ure and human woe, and the man who is lifted 
out above the earth is the one Man who is 
able to understand and to help all other men. 

This principle is scientific as well as the- 
ological. It is written in God's larger volume. 
It finds ''tongues in trees, books in the run- 
ning brooks." Look abroad through nature 
and is not this the parable — that life comes 
only through death, that to-day is born in 
the tomb of yesterday, that every quivering 
stalk of wheat is a monument standing over 
the grave of a dead grain? Yonder goes a 
great ship plowing through the waves and 
spreading its white wings in the sunlight like 
some gigantic butterfly; and such it is, for 
many a noble tree has gone into the chrys- 
alis state in the shipyard, to come out by and 
by this thing of beauty and embodiment of 
grace. The prolific vegetation of the Car- 



The Law of Service 189 

boniferous age lived its teeming life and then 
died, and lo, centuries later it appears as coal, 
the motive power of the great good natured 
but capricious dragon that thunders along the 
iron track; or cozily crackling in the grate 
it tells the story of its prehistoric birth. 
Death has always been at the birth of life. 
Its shadow has always been the first to fall 
across the cradle. Sacrifice has been the 
bridge over which passage is made from the 
old to the new. Out of the stones that have 
closed the door of ancient sepulchers have 
been builded the cathedrals that stand for 
modern faith. 

In the same year there came from the press 
two books that were destined to mold opinion 
with strong, masterful hand — Social Evolu- 
tion, by Benjamin Kidd, and The Ascent of 
Man, by Henry Drummond. Both were writ- 
ten from the standpoint of Christianity, and 
are essentially reverent in their tone; yet the 
difference between them is organic. Mr. Kidd 
sees only the struggle for existence, the blind, 
selfish "grapple of life with its environment." 
Anything of unselfishness, of altruism, of 
morality that may be found in the race is a 
contribution from without, the introduction 
of new conditions, the intrusion of a new force 



190 Back to Bethlehem 

or factor into human life and history. Self- 
denial, he teaches, has no root in nature, no 
analogy in the brute creation, and we must 
look for its philosophy as for its origin in that 
which is extraneous to man. He insists that 
any deepening and softening of character, at 
any time manifest, is the direct and peculiar 
product of the religious system. His defini- 
tion of religion as concerned with social phe- 
nomena is, "Religion is a form of belief, pro- 
viding an ultrarational sanction for that large 
class of conduct in the individual where his 
interests and the interests of the social organ- 
ism are antagonistic, and by which the former 
are rendered subordinate to the latter in the 
general interests of the evolution which the 
race is undergoing." It may be said that this 
represents the scientific and the theological 
view up to very recent date. 

Mr. Drummond announces a much larger 
creed. He has caught a glimpse of a great 
truth or a great error. His book thrills with a 
new and grander gospel of facts. He is not 
the discoverer. Alfred Russell Wallace hinted 
it when he said that there came a time when 
"variations of intelligence became more prof- 
itable to the primates than variations in body." 
John Fiske elaborated this idea and gilded it 



The Law of Service 191 

with his luminous imagination. But Henry 
Drummond sent it forth to the world dressed 
in everyday clothes and speaking in everyday 
language. He claims that the old-time evo- 
lutionist has read but one table of the law ; 
has listened only to the curses from the Mount 
Ebal of science. Over against the thunder- 
scarred peak of Ebal is Gerizim, and the voice 
that speaks from this summit is the voice of 
blessing. 

Side by side with the struggle for life so 
splendidly elaborated by Charles Darwin is 
the struggle for the life of others which Mr. 
Darwin did not see; a voice which he did 
not hear, yet a voice which has in it the love 
songs of the ages, the altruisms, the patriot- 
isms, the crucifixions of all the sweet-voiced 
centuries in which men have been climbing 
toward the light. And this is the parable of 
nature. Down to the minutest germ cell this 
principle of sacrifice holds. In order that this 
cell may reproduce it must disintegrate. If it 
would perpetuate the life contained it must give 
up a part of itself. The flower dies that the 
seed may mature, the seed dies that a new life 
may be created. The starch or albumen 
stored by the plant about the mysterious life 
atom becomes the food of man. We are feed- 



ig2 Back to Bethlehem 

ing every day upon the product of self-sacri- 
fice, of unselfish forethought. We take for 
ourselves that for which the plant died in 
order that it might bequeath it to its children. 
Every tree in the orchard, every grain stalk 
in the cornfield, every tall weed by the road- 
side is living for others, and is ready to die 
for others. The doctrine of self-sacrifice 
comes to us fragrant with the odor of ten 
thousand blossoms and rich with the yellow 
fruitage of ten thousand harvest fields. Self- 
preservation is no longer the first law of na- 
ture. There is no self in nature. Pope's sar- 
castic arraignment of human pride becomes 
the watchword of this new scientific gospel : 

"For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, 
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower: 
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew, 
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew. 
For me the mine a thousand treasures brings, 
For me health gushes from a thousand springs ; 
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; 
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies." 

This is not self-love, but a large reading 
of the new gospel writ all over the world. 
This is the meaning of the cross, that great 
overshadowing mystery of the ages. Jesus the 
Nazarene was here illustrating the very crisis 



The Law of Service 193 

of this Otherism, this self-forgetting self- 
surrender which has been hinted at in litera- 
ture, in art, in religion, and in nature. The 
Man who hung upon the cross was humanity, 
was cosmic being, at its climax. We shade 
our eyes when we catch a glimpse of his radi- 
ant figure enveloped by the cloud on the 
Mount of Transfiguration ; we are thrilled 
with awe as we see him walk forth from the 
sepulcher when an angel was his page and an 
earthquake was his herald ; but Jesus the King 
of kings and Lord of lords on the cross with 
thorn-pierced brow and nail-torn hands was 
nothing less than God manifest in the flesh, 
whose death was the crowning glory of his 
life, the highest exaltation of love, the su- 
premest fulfillment of law. 

It means the survival of the humane. It 
has taught us not only to scorn but to hate 
the formal curses of the church, such as were 
launched at the Dutch Republic. It brings 
recoil of horror at the advice of Amherst to 
Bouquet to inoculate the Indians with small- 
pox in order that they might be destroyed by 
wholesale. It fills us w^ith revolt when Napo- 
leon orders his gunners to fire round shot 
upon the ice of the lakes at Austerlitz upon 
which six thousand Russian fugitives had hud- 



194 Back to Bethlehem 

died for safety, until the whole mass sunk into 
the chilling waters. And it prepares us for 
the better days and the larger sympathies, in 
response to which Washington can say at 
Yorktown to his exultant soldiers, "Don't 
cheer, my men, posterity will do that for us;'' 
and Commodore Philip can say on the battle- 
swept deck of the Texas as the Spanish flag 
goes down, "Don't cheer, boys, the poor devils 
are dying." 

"The victor looks over the shot-churned wave, 
At the riven ship of his foeman brave, 

And the men in their lifeblood lying: 
And the joy of conquest leaves his eyes, 
The lust of fame and battle dies, 

And he says, 'Don't cheer; they're dying.* 

"Cycles have passed since Bayard the brave — 
Passed since Sydney the water gave, 

On Zutphen's red sod lying : 
But the knightly echo has lingered far — 
It rang in the words of the Yankee tar 
When he said, 'Don't cheer; they're dying.* 

"Why leap our hearts at that captain's name, 
Or his who battled his way to fame. 
Our flag in the far East flying? 
The nation's spirit these deeds reveal — 
But none the less does that spirit peal 
In the words, 'Don't cheer ; they're dying.' " 



IX 

THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON 



IX 

The Gospel of a Person 

In the midst of the Orations of J\Ioses which 
make up the greater part of the fifth book of 
the Bible is the Book of the Covenant. In the 
midst of the Book of the Covenant is a strik- 
ing prophecy. The author or editor is dis- 
cussing the national life of Israel. This he 
treats as affected by three persons or offices: 
the King, the Priest, and the Prophet. These 
three give visibility to the divine rule, stability 
to religion, and insure progress in social and 
individual morals. The duties and the limita- 
tions of the King are first set forth : chosen of 
God from among the brethren, simple in 
tastes, loyal to the truth, a keeper of the law 
himself and so an example and an inspiration 
to his subjects. The Priest is next considered, 
and sundry warnings and injunctions are 
spoken for his direction. Then in reference 
to the last office we read the familiar words : 
*'The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a 
Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy breth- 
ren like unto me ; unto him shall ye hearken." 



198 Back to Bethlehem 

The reference is most likely to the pro- 
phetic order rather than to any individual 
prophet. Moses is noting the relation of the 
people to God. They are to have kings, but" 
only such as shall be of their own blood and 
of the Lord's appointing. They are to have 
priests in order that religious worship shall 
be sustained and religious form perpetuated. 
And finally, as an offset to the enchanters and 
necromancers of the strange land they are to 
possess, there is to be a line of prophets who 
will be able to prove their genuineness by 
certain fixed tests, and who will be able also to 
satisfy the cravings of the human heart for the 
supernatural. There would be as ever a hun- 
gering after God and the unknown. This 
hunger, responsible as it was for the magicians 
and sorcerers of Canaan, would be met by the 
true prophets of God. 

This is the most natural interpretation of 
these words. At the same time the interpre- 
tation given by Peter, and the reference of this 
prophecy to Jesus Christ, is in accord with 
the methods of inspiration. The local need for 
communication with God which should find a 
local supply but represents the universal need, 
and this larger need was to be met by the 
Messiah. This is Old Testament usage. The 



The Gospel of a Person 199 

very word Messiah was applied to the High 
Priest of the day in anticipation of the great 
High Priest who should be ''holy, harmless, 
undefiled, separate from sinners." Other in- 
stances of a dual prophecy occur. In the 
midst of the decline and fall of Israel, Hosea 
appeals to early history to prove the eternal 
care of God: 

"When Israel was a child, then I loved him, 
And called my son out of Egypt." 

These words are seized by Matthew, ever 
eager for an Old Testament corroboration, as 
applying to the asylum given by Egypt to the 
infant Jesus. The purpose of Hosea was a 
simple one ; Matthew, however, makes his 
words a link in the chain of prophecies that 
attest the Messiahship of the Nazarene. The 
Old Testament prophet was looking backward 
to the beginnings of Israel; the evangelist 
under the influence of the Holy Spirit reads a 
remarkable forecast in these apparently ob- 
vious and artless words, thus connecting the 
bondage of Israel in Egypt forever with the 
history of the world's Redeemer. 

There is taught here in this remote past a 
prominent feature of modern theology — the 
gospel of a Person. The people at the time of 



200 Back to Bethlehem 

this promise were in dire straits. They had 
never seen higher hills than the Mokkattam 
hills that overlook Cairo. Now for months 
all about them had towered the notched, light- 
ning-blasted peaks of Sinai. They had known 
only the voiceless deities of Egypt, here the 
rocks had quivered before the words of this 
new God. In dismay they had cried out, "Let 
me not hear again the voice of the Lord my 
God, neither let me see this great fire any 
more, that I die not." Then it was that Moses 
promised a far-off better dispensation and a 
Prophet who should live among men and 
whose teaching should make hard things easy 
and rough places smooth. 

This is the modern need — a personal Sav- 
iour; the redemption of men by a Man. The 
world cannot be saved by doctrine. It has 
never been without a generous supply of these, 
and they have not been without their use. 
Men have sought to frame in words their con- 
ceptions of God and of life, and we have 
called these formulae doctrines. We have no 
right to say that there is no utility and no 
power in these conceptions. God is the God 
of the brain as well as of the heart. He can 
help in our opinions as well as in our emo- 
tions and our activities. If we have reason 



The Gospel of a Person 201 

to believe that he will assist in the performance 
of duty we may also look for his assistance 
in the conception of duty. He is perhaps as 
willing to make for us our theology as to regu- 
late our ethics. As the Saviour of the world 
possibly he is not unwilling that we understand 
some of the processes of salvation. 

There is heard in some quarters an outcry 
against theology. The unfortunate science is 
between two fires. It is attacked from the side 
of rationalism, and it is also severely buffeted 
from the opposite camp of a rigid evangelism. 
On the one hand, those who are learned and 
proud of their learning have outgrown theol- 
ogy — for which they are profoundly thankful ; 
on the other hand, those who are ignorant and 
proud of their ignorance have no place for it 
— for which they offer praise. It is to the 
former a fossil; a trussed and crumpling 
mummy ; a bit of amber in which, like a luck- 
less fly, are imprisoned the ideas of the past. 
It is only a curiosity now reserved for the 
showcase of the museum. It does not count 
in the sum of modern forces. It has no place 
in the modern pulpit. The railroad strike, the 
problem of the wage earner, the ethics of the 
wedding ring — these are current, and theology 
has gone into limbo with astrology and the 



202 Back to Bethlehem 

maelstrom and the sea serpent and other 
strange and uncanny superstitions of an early 
day. 

The opposite school has no use for doc- 
trines. Its disciples tell us that the gospel is 
and ought to be the theme of the preacher; 
though what they mean by the gospel as dis- 
tinct from a definition of the gospel they 
do not deign to explain. However, according 
to their notions theological seminaries are in- 
tended to be incubators where the ministerial 
bird is hatched and thence sent out properly 
catalogued and labeled ; with his claws duly 
pared to keep him from scratching in the smug 
and rectilinear landscape gardening of the 
fathers, and his wings prudently clipped to 
keep him from flying into his neighbor's yard. 

All this is narrow, and one school is as nar- 
row as the other. If we have truth it is surely 
no crime to attempt the definition of that truth. 
On the other hand, it is no surrender of our 
faith, nor an impeachment of the fathers, to 
insist upon the liberty of changing our defi- 
nition whenever our standpoint changes, or of 
adding to that definition should a larger seg- 
ment of the truth be apprehended. We must 
have a creed. Do they say, "Creeds are 
rigid" ? Yes, as rigid as the rails that run over 



The Gospel of a Person 203 

hill and valley, spiked down so that the swift 
express may thunder from one end of the 
continent to the other. But allowance is made 
for expansion and 'contraction on the most 
rigid lines. Do we say, ''Creeds are narrow" ? 
So is the line of safety on the chart, marked 
by the buoys and along which the ship must 
be brought if it would escape the rocks. But 
a wiser pilot with better tools may discover 
a better channel, and we do not sail long with 
the doctrinaire captain who keeps to the old 
course because it is marked on the old charts. 
The prodigal son had a creed. He realized 
its breadth and force when among the swine. 
The dying thief had one. It came to him in 
awful power as he hung on the cross side by 
side with the man who was to him the Lord 
of life and death. The tiniest child who folds 
his hands and says, "Our Father who art in 
heaven," has uttered a whole body of theology, 
enough to thrill the heart of an angel or to 
save a race of men. And yet it is not a doc- 
trine that the world wants most. In itself it 
is only a definition, and definitions belong to 
the dictionary, not to the heart. It is only the 
prescription and suggests the method of cure. 

Nor is the world deliverance to be effected 
by a morality. There has never been a lack 



^04 Back to Bethlehem 

of moral precepts. Christianity has no monop- 
oly of truth. All truth is not in the Bible. 
The Bible did not make the truth. It was the 
truth which made the Bible, and it was too 
large to get all of itself into one book. The 
Indian poet who wrote of God, 

"If with the heart you seek him 
He's here, he's there, he's everywhere; 
Go where you will you meet him," 

had not been reading our Bible. God had 
spoken to him by some other voice. The world 
had much of the Sermon on the Mount before 
it was preached. Very little of it is really new. 
David and Isaiah had caught a glimpse of the 
hilltop on which Jesus sat as he uttered these 
magnificent words. Jesus as the Messiah of 
the New Testament was but quoting in certain 
phrases what he had said before as Jehovah 
of the Old Testament, or what had been said 
by his servants. That which had been scat- 
tered through thirty centuries was now 
crowded into half an hour. The flowers that 
had bloomed along the hillsides of the world's 
history were gathered and compressed and 
distilled, and the result was a drop of the attar 
of roses which we call the Sermon on the 
Mount. 



The Gospel of a Person 205 

Indeed, we may find fragments of this ser- 
mon in the Encheiridion of Epictetus, and in 
the philosophy of Marcus AureHus. Here, by 
the way, was moraHty enough for the world's 
following. But the smooth platitudes of the 
Greek philosopher and the chaste periods of 
the Roman emperor have never very seriously 
affected human thinking or living, while the 
Sermon on the Mount has conquered the 
world. 

The power which is to transform the 
race is not abstract, but concrete. It is not 
subscription to a creed, nor obedience to a law, 
nor indorsement of a system of morals. It is 
devotion to a Person. "For I know zvhom 
I have believed" is the first Apostles' Creed. 
And herein lies the secret of victory : a Person, 
real, live, substantial, potential, the exponent 
of truth, the substance of law, the personifi- 
cation of love ; a ''who" instead of a "what" ; 
a Man instead of a method ; a being who is 
himself all that we ought to be, and all that 
we long to be. This is the need of modern 
theology, and this need is met in Jesus Christ. 

Now, what m.anner of Person is this to be ? 
Had any conception of the true need of the 
race dawned upon the mind of this old-time 
seer? Can it be that centuries ago when the 



^o6 Back to Bethlehem 

world was young, before the race had in any 
large sense come to a knowledge of itself, be- 
fore Homer had showed the might of human 
passions, or Job had uncovered the deeps of 
human sorrow, or Shakespeare had swept his 
master hand over all the chords of the soul, 
that even then the children of men knew what 
they would wait for when the days of knowl- 
edge had come? This old-time prophecy is a 
matter of to-day. It is as fresh and as cur- 
rent as the morning paper. It is girding its 
loins, and taking its staff in hand, for it has 
business with the twentieth century. It is 
truth, and "the eternal years of God are hers." 
The Prophet is to be like Moses, and Moses 
was a deliverer. The instincts of deliverance 
dominated him from the beginning. He killed 
the Egyptian whom he saw smiting an Israel- 
ite. This was not murder ; it was rescue. He 
befriended the daughters of Jethro, and chiv- 
alrously gave them the right of way at the 
wellside in Midian. The surprised young 
women hastened to say to their father, "An 
Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the 
shepherds, and also drew water for us." They 
were mistaken as to his nationality, but not as 
to his mission. He did not wait to introduce 
himself. It was perfectly natural for him to 



The Gospel of a Person 207 

be helping somebody. He was a gentleman 
of the old school. He was always on the side 
of the weak. He seemed born to make things 
better. 

And deliverance is still needed. The Egyp- 
tian taskmaster is still in the land. The shep- 
herd daughters of the people still suffer at the 
hands of the strong and heartless. The Mid- 
gard serpent still lies coiled about the world, 
and the race is waiting for Thor, the youngest 
of the gods. We have not yet outgrown the 
idea and the fact of sin. We may not call it 
by the names our fathers used. We may not 
trace it to the same source, nor seek to apply 
the same remedies ; but we are conscious of its 
presence and shudder as they did at its power. 
When we would do good, evil is present with 
us. It is on our streets, it is in our homes, it 
is in our hearts. It is not a theological dogma, 
but a fact. We do not learn of its existence 
in the Catechism, but in the cradle. We do 
not take it as a part of our intellectual fur- 
nishing, a theory the acceptance of which 
qualifies us for ecclesiastical recognition ; but 
as part of our world knowledge, knowledge 
that forces itself upon our notice as soon as 
we touch life. 

And it is the same old heartbreaking, home- 



2o8 Back to Bethlehem 

wrecking agency that it has always been. Men 
may come and men may go, but it goes on 
forever ; leaving the serpent trail that blighted 
the blossoms of Eden and cursed the generous 
earth; driving its Juggernaut car down the 
crowded thoroughfares of the latest century 
just as it swept down the first or the eighth or 
the twelfth. 

"Never a king but had some king above, 
And never a law to right the wrongs of love, 
And ever a fanged snake beneath a dove. 
Saw I on earth." 

The world has had a Deliverer for centuries, 
but the Avorld is not yet delivered, and there is 
still work for Moses or for one like unto him. 
This delivering Christ, whose form appears on 
the raging currents of our modern life, whose 
voice sounds along the halls of trade and in- 
vention, was promised long before there was 
any modern life. We may call his deliverance 
by any name we please ; load it down with 
mediaeval scholasticism, or blur it with mod- 
ern affectation, or disguise it with the euphu- 
isms of science, it is still deliverance from sin, 
and it is the deliverance the world wants and 
must have. 

Moses was a leader of his people. Out of 



The Gospel of a Person 209 

Egypt meant the wilderness. He who dehv- 
ered them from the fleshpots must lead them 
through the desert. His work had but begun 
when they shouldered the weapons that had 
drifted to the shores of the Red Sea, and raised 
the song of thanksgiving. We are again in 
the wilderness. Our world is a world of doubt. 
This is especially an age of inquiry. The in- 
terrogation point is on our coat of arms. The 
advance of physical science has jarred so many 
of our traditional beliefs. Dana and Lyell and 
Sedgewick have modified our ideas of crea- 
tion, and have shown us wrinkles on the fair 
face of the earth which prove her much older 
than we had inferred from the ancient and 
approved interpretation of Genesis. Galileo 
and Kepler and Young have revealed to us the 
size of the universe, and have indicated how 
big an undertaking it was for Joshua to stop 
the sun in mid course ; and some have even 
dared to wonder if even the conquest of Ca- 
naan was worth the trouble and confusion of 
such an experiment. Traditional theology has 
been driven to explanation and concession. 
Many of the settled convictions of the fathers 
have been unsettled, many of our shibboleths 
have become obsolete, and the fountains of the 
great deep have been broken up. Once losing 



2IO Back to Bethlehem 

their childhood faith, many have gone on from 
doubt to despair. "It cannot be denied," writes 
Mr. Disraeh, "that the aspect of the world to 
those who have faith in the spiritual nature of 
man is at this time dark and distressful. 
What is styled Materialism is in the ascendant. 
This disturbance in the mind of the nations has 
been occasioned by two causes : first, by the 
powerful assaults on the divinity of the Semitic 
literature by the Germans; and, secondly, by 
recent discoveries in science which are hastily 
supposed to be inconsistent with our long- 
received convictions as to the relation between 
Creator and created." A popular novelist de- 
clares that he who seeks for truth must "wan- 
der alone into the land of Absolute Negation 
and Denial. In this land it is always night 
and the earth is covered with ashes." 

It is a pathless wilderness which lies beyond 
Egypt. We must have our Moses even to-day. 
It is the Way and the Truth and the Life 
that is needed as never before. We are wait- 
ing for the man who knows — one who has 
touched life at both extremes ; who was before 
and who is after ; who has noted the path from 
the beginning and who has explored it to the 
end. Browning in his high-ranged Brahman- 
ism has said: 



The Gospel of a Person 211 

"Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear. 
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal 

and the woe. 
But God has a few whom he whispers in the ear, 
The rest may reason and welcome." 

God is not exclusive. He is ready to whisper 
to any man who is ready to listen. We have 
met in the streets of our cities, under the dome 
of our churches, in the home of luxury and in 
the home of want, the Divine Man who is 
whispering in the ear of all the sorrow-broken 
and suffering ; who is leading the race through 
the desert to Sinai and Horeb; who will in- 
spire the heart even of those who fall by the 
way with the thought that they are pilgrims 
toward the Hght and that their lowly graves 
shall mark out a sure path to the land of 
promise. 

What a colossus was this Moses ! We are 
just beginning to learn the breadth of his per- 
sonality, the range and sweep of his brain. He 
was centuries ahead of his age, while skilled 
in all the learning of that age. Though of the 
slave caste, he found his place in the highest 
circle of Egyptian life when Egypt meant the 
climax of civilization. The latter-day jurist 
goes back to these old laws enacted in the 
desert as the basis of modem jurisprudence. 



212 Back to Bethlehem 

The physician acknowledges that the health 
regulations of the camp of Israel antedate the 
sanitation of this clean and favored century. 
The philanthropist longs for the day when men 
shall deal with each other after the manner 
prescribed in these ancient documents. The 
statesman recognizes in Moses the founder of 
a commonwealth in which was the germ of the 
modern republic. Whatever the people needed 
they found in Moses. Did they ask an example 
in self-sacrifice ? Here was a man who as the 
adopted son of Thermuthis sat at the king's 
table and commanded the king's armies. Yet 
for the sake of his brethren in bondage he re- 
fused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daugh- 
ter, "choosing rather to suffer affliction with 
the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures 
of sin for a season" ; esteeming the reproach of 
Christ — that is, the reproach which Christ suf- 
fered in the oppression of his people, and which 
Moses suffered with him — as greater riches 
than the treasures of Egypt. Did they ask an 
example of moral courage? Moses set out 
alone for Midian to defy one nation and to 
deliver another. Then with a full knowledge 
of desert life and a keen realization of its haz- 
ard he led the helpless thousands away from 
the cornfields of the Nile valley. He might in 



The Gospel of a Person 213 

some respects have lived in any age. He might 
have been a contemporary of Lycurgus, and 
perhaps he could have softened the rigid laws 
of this man of iron without taking the nerve 
out of them. Easily might he have stood with 
the Gracchi when they went forth to redeem 
Rome, and his voice and his wisdom might 
have saved this national reform and saved the 
reformers as well. When Ambrose met in de- 
bate the eloquent Symmachus and won the 
Roman Senate to Christianity, the tact and the 
statesmanship of Moses would have saved the 
church from many of its excesses and sent it 
pure and clean down the future. This cosmo- 
politan genius would have been at home in 
San Marco with Savonarola, could have trod- 
den with Bradford and Standish and Carver 
the deck of the Mayflower, or have sat at 
Lincoln's elbow when he signed the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation. 

A Prophet like unto me ! How clearly does 
this far-visioned seer realize that just such a 
leader is necessary — a man who will be neigh- 
bor to every man ; whose range is not affected 
by time nor posited by race peculiarity; one 
whose words and whose spirit will be heard 
and understood in every age and in every 
clime and in every social stratum. The great 



214 Back to Bethlehem 

painters have given us pictures of the Christ, 
and these conceptions have been tinged by the 
environment and the personaHty of the artist. 
Da Vinci, for instance, shows us the tender 
Christ; Titian shows us the human Christ; 
Angelo represents the conquering Christ; 
Raphael gives the divine Christ ; Correggio 
and Guido Reni paint the suffering Christ ; and 
Hoffman brings us the Christ beautiful. Even 
the sacred writers, as suggested elsewhere, 
give us different phases of the same character. 
No two could see alike. Matthew sees in Jesus 
the fulfillment of the old-time prophecies, the 
completion and the climax of the Old Testa- 
ment dispensation. Mark portrays the Con- 
queror. His verbs are in the present tense. 
He hurries from event to event, from victory 
to victory, in one great sweep of power. Luke 
sits down quietly at his desk to give us as a 
student the life of a Man. As historian he 
records the details of his parentage and child- 
hood. As physician he is minute in his treat- 
ment of clinical cases ; as artist he gives us 
dainty studies of life scenes and incidents. 
John is one of the Sons of Thunder. He sees 
the Eternal Word, dwelling in the shadows 
with God ; the Almighty Creator of all that is, 
made flesh and dwelling among us ; concealing 



The Gospel of a Person 215 

yet revealing the glory of the Father; giving 
life; promising the Spirit; discipling the 
world. 

But, after all, none of this is adequate. Jesus 
of Nazareth cannot be taken at a single sitting. 
He is not a Jew, nor a Roman; he is not 
Aryan, nor Semitic; not Italian, nor English. 
He is the one man who is never an anachro- 
nism, and nowhere an alien. His words are 
still damp from the press. We wake up in the 
morning and find his spirit in the leading edi- 
torials, we listen to the sound of hammers out 
our back windows building the hospital after 
his plans. The smokeless powder leaves the 
atmosphere clear so that we may see his cross 
upon the battlefield ; and with the red cross go 
the newest scientific instruments and the latest 
appliances for comfort and help. 

"I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life or death 
His mercy underlies. 

"I know not where his islands lift 

Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond his love and care." 



X 

JESUS AND THE NEW AGE 



X 

Jes«s and the New Age 

Jesus Christ always faces the new century. 
There has never been a day when this could 
not be said. He is every man's contemporary. 
He is part of every age. Strong men have so 
stamped themselves upon historic periods that 
these periods have been called after their 
names. So we have the Gregorian age, the age 
of Charlemagne, or of Thomas a Becket, the 
Augustan age, the Napoleonic, or the Bis- 
marckian. These men have seemed to be 
suited to the day in which they lived. They 
would not be at home elsewhere. Abraham 
would be out of place in the present century. 
Cromwell would be an anachronism in the 
England of Edward VH. Martin Luther 
would create but little sensation by nailing his 
protest upon the door of our modern church. 
Rare is it to find a man whom the world has 
never outgrown ; who keeps pace with its 
swiftest progress. But such is the Divine Man 
to whom the world more and more bears wit- 
ness. He is just as manifestly in the world 



220 Back to Bethlehem 

now, and just as definitely a part of current 
history, as when he paid the taxes in the prov- 
ince of GaHlee, or answered the charge of 
treason before the Roman judge. 

Moreover, he is the one Person whom the 
world has never been without. Before the 
enrollment on the census of his supposed par- 
ents in Bethlehem and the register in the 
temple of the birth of a son in the royal fam- 
ily, he had walked with men and watched the 
progress of events. We talk sometimes of 
dispensations — the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, the 
Levitical, the Christian, etc. — but this is super- 
ficial. There is but one dispensation. There 
has been but one plan of salvation and but one 
Saviour. This plan has never been changed 
because of new conditions and unexpected con- 
tingencies. God has never been taken by sur- 
prise. He has never remodeled his campaign. 
With stately, resistless tread his purposes have 
marched on to their fulfillment. There has 
been but one true religion, even as there has 
been but one astronomy. There may be a 
Ptolemaic system with a few great truths and 
many speculations, and a Copernican system 
that moves in a mightier sphere and touches 
remoter horizons, and a nebular hypothesis 
whose factors are gigantic constellations and 



Jesus and the New Age 221 

on whose dial plate an eternity is registered; 
but it is all one astronomy. The same sun has 
always driven away the winter and the dark, 
and the same stars have walked serenely across 
the sky. 

The world has always had this one true reli- 
gion, in part or in its fullness, in prophecy or 
in fulfillment, in the word spoken by the angels, 
or in the great salvation spoken by the Lord. 
And Jesus Christ has always been the prom- 
inent figure of this eternal scheme. His asso- 
ciates in the flesh need only ''search the 
Scriptures," the Old Testament Scriptures, 
and they will find there abundant and em- 
phatic testimonials to himself. The two dis- 
ciples walking to Emmaus, bewildered by the 
awful events of the crucifixion week and the 
sudden downfall of their hopes, listen to the 
expounding of all the Scriptures, "beginning 
at Moses and all the prophets," and lo ! they 
are full of the things concerning Christ. The 
Ethiopian eunuch reads the words of a 
prophet, words written centuries before, and 
when from Philip he hears the story of the 
crucified Jesus, the sublime being who inspires 
the prophetic pen and the humble Nazarene are 
seen to be the same, and he craves baptism 
in this confidence. Here is a book that records 



222 Back to Bethlehem 

the world's beginning and that is dark and 
awful with portents of its end ; a book that has 
grown with the growth of the race and has 
noted in graphic lines every step of the up- 
ward path; a Book whose pages have been 
written in waste and weary deserts, in palaces 
of cedar, in homesick captivities amid alien 
splendors, or by the seabeach of lonely islands ; 
written by kings and poets and shepherds and 
fishermen; but through it all from cover to 
cover walks one supreme Personality, by whom 
it seems inspired and of whom it seems a 
biography. 

And this one Man has adapted himself to 
every age. He is always and everywhere close 
to life. He is always able to meet the local 
need. In the world's first stages, when men 
were few and manners simple, he walks in the 
garden in the cool of the day. He talks famil- 
iarly with the man and the woman. He is 
so human and so natural that they shrink 
abashed at his presence only because they have 
learned that they are naked and not because 
he is God. So we find the representatives of 
the different eras giving voice to their confi- 
dence in and recording their experience with 
Jesus, the great Jehovah of the old dispensa- 
tion. Abraham binding upon the sacrificial 



Jesus and the New Age 223 

altar his son Isaac, the son in whom all his 
hopes for the future are centered, and trusting 
with a blind, passionate trust that God will 
help, sees the ram caught in the thicket and 
cries out, "Jehovah-jireh" — "The Lord sees 
our need and will provide." And greatly did 
the patriarch and his family need a Provider, 
for they were in the midst of a strange land 
with strange customs, and the future was full 
of untried problems. Moses stood on the hill- 
top with Aaron and Hur, and Amalek fought 
with Israel. And Moses held up his hands 
in prayer, and Aaron and Hur supported him 
on either side. So Amalek was discomfited 
and fled away down the dark mountain passes. 
Then Moses builded his altar and called it 
"Jehovah-nissi" — "Jehovah is my banner" — 
for sorely did the people need a victorious 
leader, a mighty standard as a rallying point. 
The wilderness was before them. Amalek was 
only the first of the desert tribes that should lie 
in wait for them in their long and awful jour- 
ney. But the battle cry was to be, "The hand 
on the banner of Jehovah: the war of the 
Lord against Amalek." And with this con- 
quering watchword they should march 
straight through the wilderness. 

Again in Canaan the Angel came and sat 



224 Back to Bethlehem 

under an oak and watched Gideon threshing 
the Httle grain he had concealed from the Midi- 
anites. The land was overrun with the enemy, 
and Israel was without a leader or an army. 
Then the Angel said to Gideon, "Surely I will 
be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midi- 
anites as one man." And Gideon called the al- 
tar he built then and there "Jehovah-shalom" 
— ''The Lord is peace." For Israel longed for 
peace, that the people might plow their acres 
and trim their vines. Then in the days of 
Jeremiah, when Israel was being smitten by 
the hosts of Babylon, when national ruin 
seemed imminent, the prophet looked for a day 
and looked for a deliverer and said his name 
shall be ''J^^ovah-tsidkenu" — ''J^^ovah our 
righteousness," the Lord who by righteous- 
ness was to bring back prosperity to the elect 
people. This same idea is magnificently illus- 
trated by Ezekiel, the vision seer, the brooding 
mystic of the ancient dispensation. By the 
rivers of Babylon he reads upon the sky the 
history of the captive people. He looks and 
the glory of the Lord departs from Jerusalem 
and stands upon the mountain on the east side 
of the city, and the city is left desolate. Then 
in the process of time Israel repents ; the tem- 
ple is builded and measured, and then the glory 



Jesus and the New Age 225 

of the Lord comes from the east, and his 
''Voice was Hke the noise of many waters, and 
the earth shined with his glory." It was the 
supreme vision of the cherubim and the fire 
and the wheels that had beforetime gone out. 
And in the rapture of his joy the prophet, in a 
burst of eloquence that rivals the apoca- 
lyptic rhapsodies of Saint John, shouted 
that the name of the city from that day 
should be "Jehovah-shammah" — ''The Lord 
is there." 

And so this Jehovah-Jesus moves like a 
conqueror through the Old Testament records. 
He is everywhere present and everywhere the 
center around which move the hopes and the 
aspirations of the race. When he steps into 
the New Testament the same profound ef- 
fect is produced — he is every man's friend. 
He is abreast of every question. He is con- 
sulted in reference to matters domestic, social, 
and political. His assistance is sought in the 
division of inheritance among legal heirs ; his 
opinion asked as to the comparative claims of 
Gerizim and Jerusalem as shrines of worship; 
his intercession sought even in the presence of 
death. The people, indeed, recognizing that 
he is the ideal man, the man for the times, 
clamor to make him king. 



226 Back to Bethlehem 

Pass on to the apostolic times. Jesus is 
gone. The shock is so recent that there has 
been no time for reaction. The young church 
is stricken at the heart. There is no assurance 
of permanence. Indeed, there is every reason 
to beHeve that the present economy is passing. 
The foretold ''tribulation" is at hand. The 
eagles are gathering together from the ends 
of the earth for the rending of the carcass. 
The wild disorders in the city of Jerusalem 
and the fierce fanaticism of the various reli- 
gious sects are preparing the way for Ves- 
pasian and Titus and national ruin. And now 
the Jesus of the day is the Jesus of the Second 
Advent. Every word he had spoken in refer- 
ence to his return is treasured up. Every day 
the heavens are scanned to find the heralds 
of his approach. Did he not say that he would 
come ''immediately after the tribulation of 
those days"? and the awful days are passing 
and the Son of man is due at any moment. 
Had he not sent a message to the Asiatic 
churches in which he announced, "Behold, I 
come quickly: hold that fast which thou 
hast" ? And so Paul was but voicing the senti- 
ment of the day when in nervous but glad 
anticipation he wrote, "The Lord himself shall 
descend from heaven with a shout, with the 



Jesus and the New Age 227 

voice of the archangel, and with the trump 
of God : and the dead in Christ shall rise first : 
then we which are alive and remain shall be 
caught up together with them in the clouds." 
This stalwart representative of the faith ex- 
pected to stand at his post until relieved in per- 
son by the Master. In the maze of national 
disorder, the overwhelm of human institu- 
tions, the wreck of states, it was the Christ 
who steadied and strengthened his followers. 
His star was already on the eastern hori- 
zon ; his figure was preparing to step out 
upon the sea whirl, and all would again be 
peace. 

Later along, when the field broadened and 
when the church seemed to be a permanent 
institution, or at any rate when it seemed nec- 
essary that it be permanent, then Jesus ap- 
peared as the Founder of the church. All that 
he had said in exaltation of religious organ- 
ization was remembered and emphasized. It 
was noted that he had pledged his church to 
stand against all the assaults of the gates of 
hell. It was kept fresh in mind that by his 
own word whatever the church bound on earth 
should be bound in heaven; that disputes 
should be settled by the church; that matri- 
mony should be contracted only within the 



228 Back to Bethlehem 

limits of the church. To the Crusaders Jesus 
was a man of war. In the days of Angelo, 
when the world was governed by force, he 
appears in the great picture of the Last Judg- 
ment as a powerful giant who by his resistless 
arm sweeps sinners into the pit of destruction. 
The age seemed to need a muscular judge able 
to execute his own sentences, and they found it 
in Jesus the Son of God. 

To-day we are in the midst of social prob- 
lems. It is the age of industrialism. Ques- 
tions of labor and capital, of the rich and the 
poor, of city government and of the family — 
these are crowding about us. There is a reali- 
zation that the age is out of harmony. There 
is a sense of inequality, a "consciousness of 
contradiction between economic progress and 
spiritual ideals." The disturbance is radical. 
Not the scholar alone in his dressing gown and 
slippers, but the grimy-handed workman, the 
weary woman who watches out the night, all 
are studying the problem of life and its unequal 
burdens. There is also a subtle confidence that 
this age is to settle these questions. And so the 
reformers are at work ; from the red republican 
whose slogan is "Property is robbery," to the 
prophets of brotherhood and even justice like 
Dr. van Dyke, who says: 



Jesus and the New Age 229 

"This is the Gospel of Labor, 

Ring it, ye bells of the kirk : 
The Lord of Love came down from above 
To live with the men who work." 

Now, has Jesus Christ kept up with the 
swing of thought ? Is he an outworn tradition, 
or unwearied and fresh does he still walk 
abreast of the century? There is but one an- 
swer to this question. His is the word that is 
supreme to-day. In their newest finds, in their 
broadest philanthropies, in their ripest and 
purest politics, men say they are only "going 
back to Christ." No, not going back to him. 
It is a new discovery of the old truth that the 
world has never lost him, never outstripped 
him, never passed beyond his range and reach. 
Not "back to Christ," for lo, he is at our side, 
emerging with us from the mistakes and self- 
ishness of the past generations, the explana- 
tion of such emergence, and the inspiration 
of the new age with its new and marvelous 
problems. So writes Edwin Markham of what 
he conceives to be a new discovery: 

"Balder the beautiful has come again ; 
Apollo has unveiled his sunbeamed head. 
The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice: 
Osiris comes; O Tribes of Time, rejoice! 



230 Back to Bethlehem 

And social Architects who build the state, 
Serving the Dream at citadel and gate, 
Will hail him coming through the labor hum ; 
And glad quick cries will go from man to man, 
*Lo, he has come, our Christ the Artisan; 
The King who loved the lilies, he has come.' " 

Not by communism is this industrial prob- 
lem to be solved. This is beating a retreat. 
This is going back into the kindergarten. 
There can be no individuality in such a scheme, 
nothing but the blight of an unreasoning and 
sometimes unreasonable uniformity. Society 
is not to be saved by individual self-efface- 
ment. Even the communism of the early 
church did not take away personal initiative. 
"Whiles it remained, did it not remain thine 
own? and after it was sold, was it not in thy 
power?" is Peter's challenge to Ananias, who 
sinned not in withholding a portion of his pos- 
sessions, but in professing to bring all. Nor 
is the reform to be effected by philanthropy. 
The suffering classes are not asking for 
mercy, but for justice; not for sympathy, but 
for standing ; not that their needs be supplied, 
but that their conditions be changed. To give 
alms to a man who demands a hearing and has 
a right to expect it; to organize bureaus of 
charity and soup-kitchens when the cry is for 



Jesus and the New Age 231 

arbitration, is to insult the spirit of the age, 
and to postpone for only a breathing space the 
day of reckoning. 

And so in the passionate suicidal conflict 
between labor and capital Jesus Christ brings 
his message to capital, that character is more 
than wealth, that treasure is to be laid up in 
heaven. He has a message of fidelity to labor, 
"Be faithful in the little things and by and by 
you will dwell among the large things; serve 
well and you may be served." In reference 
to the employer he teaches that *'unto every 
one that hath shall be given" ; that is, a man 
has a right to expect returns from his capital 
and his skill. To the employed he teaches that 
all men should have living wages, for "the 
laborer is worthy of his hire." And unto both 
he shows himself to be the great servant of all. 
"The Son of man came not to be ministered 
unto ;" not to rule, but to serve. 

And even the modern phenomenon of indus- 
trial opportunism finds a prophecy in his 
words. The laborer of to-day is the capitalist 
of to-morrow. But this is not only a new op- 
portunity, but also a new responsibility. The 
new master must remember the days of his 
apprenticeship the new employer deal squarely 
with his old associates. This is the teaching 



232 Back to Bethlehem 

of Jesus. The man of the parable by whose 
fidehty and skill the one pound became ten 
pounds was made ruler of ten cities. The 
reward for duty well performed was added 
responsibility. There was no discharge from 
service, no retirement from business, no escape 
from obligation. In proportion to his success 
was his new burden; he who dealt in pounds 
was to care for cities; he who handles tools 
and who succeeds is to become responsible for 
the well-being of men, women, and children. 

The kingdom of God. This was the bur- 
den of his message. This was the promise of 
his forerunner, who said, "The kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." This was the subject of 
his first sermon. This was the mission of the 
seventy, who were sent out "to preach the gos- 
pel of the kingdom." This is the substance of 
his parables. This is the first plea of the great 
prayer he taught : "Thy kingdom come." The 
kingdom of God ! The kingdom of God ! He 
spoke of it and preached it and died to estab- 
lish it, and now we are calling it "the broth- 
erhood of man," or "the gospel of humanity," 
or "altruism," or what not ; but it is the same 
great social ideal which came out of Bethle- 
hem and was forever sanctified at the cross, 
and which in these later days is coming down 



Jesus and the New Age 233 

to us bringing God's solution of all our human 
problems, and God's cure for all our social ills. 
Never has there been such pressure upon 
the integrity of the family. Europe, Canada, 
and Australia granted 20,000 divorces in 1889; 
there were 23,000 during that year in the 
United States alone. The ratio of marriage 
to divorce in Massachusetts went down from 
45 to I, to 31 to I, in twenty years. The family 
is seriously threatened by the growth of in- 
dividualism. It is held that the unit of ancient 
society, the family, is to be superseded by the 
unit of modern society, which is the individual. 
Thus declares Sir Henry Maine ; the civil law 
taking account more and more of the individ- 
ual. This is the tendency more or less marked 
of modern religion. Protestantism has been 
criticised as "an extravagant form of individ- 
ualism." "All our modern notions and specu- 
lations have taken on a bent toward individ- 
ualism," is the verdict of Horace Bushnell.. 
Added to this is the entrance of women into 
industrial relations on an equality with man. 
This also tends toward the dissolution of the 
family group. How can there be a home, we are 
asked, with its sanctity and with its traditions, 
when man and wife spend all the time in the 
office or in the mill ? These are the tendencies, 



234 Back to Bethlehem 

on the one hand. On the other hand, social- 
ism would merge the family into the state. 
"Domestic unity is inconsistent with an abso- 
lute social unity vested in the state. The fam- 
ily institution is an evolution ; it was necessary 
in the elementary conditions of society; it is 
now outgrown and must pass away in the in- 
terest of a larger and fuller growth. The 
continuity of society will no longer depend 
upon the private nursery." 

Jesus has a timely word for this new danger 
to society. With him the family is supreme. 
He dares to correct Moses, who had permitted 
a man to put away his wife. This was a 
compromise. It was an expedient of the kin- 
dergarten. The day of such compromise is 
past, and now a man shall leave his father and 
his mother and cleave unto his wife, for so it 
was in the beginning. In this he again shows 
himself abreast of the age. Science has but 
recently explained the origin and shown us 
the evolution of the family. In burning words 
we have been told how motherhood has grown 
to be the glory of woman, and the redemption 
of the race ; how through long ages of strug- 
gle and sacrifice the modern family has been 
born. And Jesus is now remembered to have 
said centuries ago, what he is again saying to 



Jesus and the New Age 235 

this century, that this family institution, to- 
ward which nature has struggled, this social 
order which we are almost ready to accept as 
accidental, and which we are told must be 
abolished in the interest of a larger evolution, 
is the divine ideal ; that all mankind is, after 
all, but a great family, and that God is the 
universal Father. "Family affection in some 
form is the almost indispensable root of Chris- 
tianity," is the latest utterance of Social Sci- 
ence." The twain shall become one flesh ; and 
what God hath joined together let no man put 
asunder," is the old-time declaration of Jesus, 
and it proves that in this respect also he knew 
what would be the needs of the race. 

Men are holding Peace Congresses and are 
pleading for arbitration, but there is nothing 
new in this. The angels told the world of 
that many centuries ago, and said that the 
Bethlehem infant was born to bring "peace 
on earth to men of good will." We hear much 
of the newest discovery in theology in ref- 
erence to the Fatherhood of God and the broth- 
erhood of man, and we are told that William 
Ellery Channing and Horace Bushnell and 
Henry Ward Beecher made this discov- 
ery. Why, the world has been calling God 
"Our Father" for countless generations on 



236 Back to Bethlehem 

the authority of the great Elder Brother, and 
so his old teaching is the newest, freshest 
thought of this fresh and vigorous age. In 
fact, better than ever before do we realize that 
the Christianity of Jesus is a force within the 
individual, and that this force finds expression 
in the effects produced by the individual. If 
there is evil this force is seen in its effort to 
remove the evil. If reform is necessary the 
world can depend upon the man in whom is 
the spirit of Christ. Is some measure neces- 
sary to lift up the fallen or to ameliorate the 
condition of those whose lives are barren and 
hard, then "by this shall all men know that ye 
are my disciples, if ye have love one to an- 
other," is the word that levels differences and 
sends a man on his ministry of mercy. 



XI 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK 



XI 

The Evoltttion of the Book 

The Bible is not a book, it is a library. It 
is not a birth, it is an evolution. It is not 
Athena who sprang fully armed from the brain 
of Jove; it is rather Dionysus, who, sewed 
up in the thigh of the thunder god, grew 
steadily to his intended proportions. Its first 
chapter and its last are centuries apart. No 
man who saw its beginning saw its ending. 
The world that received the Revelation was 
vastly different from the world that greeted 
the Pentateuch. The author of its earlier 
pages had no conception of the startling ret- 
inue that should tread in his footsteps and 
supplement his work. The denouement of this 
great world drama was hidden in the mind 
of the world's Creator for centuries after the 
prologue had been spoken. 

There is indeed a marvelous plan, and it 
moves toward a marvelous climax ; and when 
we consider the conditions under which it was 
announced we are impressed with the magni- 
tude of the enterprise. The Scriptures them- 



240 Back to Bethlehem 

selves do not hesitate to acknowledge a plural 
origin: "God having of old time spoken unto 
the fathers in the prophets, by divers portions 
and in divers manners" — "fragmentarily and 
multifariously," as this phrase has been freely 
construed; each revelation a fragment of the 
one great truth, and each incomplete of itself. 
The Koran, if we are to believe tradition, was 
written by Gabriel in the seventh heaven, on 
silk, and dictated to Mohammed in the first 
heaven. The prophet there inscribed it upon 
parchment and mutton bones, and deposited 
it in a chest. It all came in the lifetime of 
Mohammed. 

Sixteen centuries pass from the time that 
Moses wrote until the last epistle was penned. 
We say from the time that Moses wrote, for, 
whatever be the result of the battle royal of 
the critics over the authorship of the Hexa- 
teuch, it is quite certain that some of it will 
be left to Moses; while, indeed, there are 
portions that are of still more ancient date, ac- 
cording to the critics. The world as we know 
it was young when the first pages of the Book 
were written. Luxor and Karnak were new. 
The mighty Hittites dominated Syria, and all 
the north from Magog to the Greek isles, 
with headquarters at Kadesh and Carchemish. 



The Evolution of the Book 241 

Egypt was splendid with pyramid and temple, 
and, freed from the hateful regime of the 
Asiatic Hyksos kings, had changed her habits 
of seclusion; had assembled her armies at 
Megiddo and had ''washed her heart," as the 
old inscriptions say — that is, had avenged the 
national insult and had humbled her age-long 
enemy. Assyria had emerged from its vassal- 
age to Chaldea, and the hosts were gathering 
along the Tigris that in the process of time 
should shake the walls of Jerusalem. 

While Moses was in command of Israel he 
wrote portions of the Hexateuch. This seems to 
be implied by the text. How much or how little 
he wrote we do not know. The book of Gen- 
esis is made up largely of separate documents. 
How many of these documents there are, and 
just what is their arrangement, has not yet 
been decided by the scholars, but the Priest's 
Code, the Yahwistic, the Elohistic, and the 
Deuteronomic are familiar to the student of 
the Bible, and must be reckoned with. This 
portion of the Scriptures did not reach its 
completed form until the days of Ezra and 
Nehemiah. The book of Judges was perhaps 
written in the time of David, as an historical 
summary of the steps that led to national unity. 
Ruth was written at the same time in order to 



242 Back to Bethlehem 

give the ancestry of the reigning king. Many 
of the Psalms were prepared at that period 
for pubHc service. Then came Solomon, dur- 
ing whose reign many of the Proverbs were 
put into shape, and probably Job was written. 
And so on down through the nation's growth 
and eventual decadence. At intervals the 
voice sounded and the world was richer for 
history or prophecy or song. 

Then came the New Testament message 
when all the roads of human history led to 
one Rome, and when Rome, whose hands 
touched the horizon, was kneeling at every 
shrine and listening to every oracle in the hope 
of hearing words that live. The old Sibylline 
books had been destroyed with the temple of 
Jupiter. The new collection made by the Sen- 
ate and revised by the higher critics under 
Augustus did not satisfy anxious souls. Then 
out of the East came the truth. In uncouth 
Greek it was clothed ; the literary artists said 
it was as the chattering of the rook, but the 
library was complete, and the world is reading 
it, and has found it able to make wise unto 
salvation. 

Even those portions of the book which are 
contemporaneous are strikingly dissimilar in 
style and finish. The brand of mind as well 



The Evolution of the Book 243 

as the fluctuation of time is set upon its pages. 
Its writers did not lose their individuahty, and 
are very sharply differentiated even when of 
the same race and period, and illuminated by 
the same manifestation of the Spirit. No bet- 
ter illustration of this can be found than in the 
case of the four evangelists. They are writing 
the same story, recording the same life, yet 
each has his own purpose and each stamps his 
own personality upon his work. The gospel 
of Mark, which is thought to haye kept closer 
to the primitive material than any of the others, 
is anecdotal in its character. There is a brisk- 
ness about it, a crisp, alert expedition, that has 
led the critics to call it "the gospel of the 
present." The motto of the author seems to 
be the word ''straightway." This he uses on 
all occasions, and it gives a nervous alacrity 
to his style which the others do not exhibit. 
Matthew is didactic. He deals in the sermons 
and discourses of Jesus. His purpose seems 
to be to show that Jesus is the Son of David, 
and he is fond of linking the actions of the 
Nazarene back to some event or prophecy of 
the olden time. "That it might be fulfilled" 
is the brand of the first gospel. Luke shows 
Jesus as a reformer; and John dreams mighty 
dreams of his deity. But in all there "work- 



244 Back to Bethlehem 

eth the one and the same Spirit, dividing unto 
each one severally as he will." 

What could be more strikingly different 
than the involved parenthetical style of the 
Epistle to the Romans, the studied logical 
sequences of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and 
the transparent simplicity of the Epistles of 
John? Where can we find greater antithesis 
than exists between the practical matter-of- 
fact James and the dark, mysterious, unfath- 
omable Apocalypse? The poet did not cease 
to be a poet when he became the mouthpiece 
of Jehovah. He still saw the glory of God in 
the heavens. Deep still called unto deep, and 
the morning stars still sang together. Mat- 
thew the publican is interested in the episode 
of the tribute money, and records how the 
stater required for taxes was found in the 
mouth of the fish. Luke the physician uses 
the language of Galen and Hippocrates in 
describing diseases (Luke 4. 38, 39; 16. 20). 
The other synoptists use the colloquial word 
pa(j)ig for needle in the proverb of the camel 
and the needle's eye ; the doctor among the 
evangelists uses naturally (3e?i6v7j, which means 
a surgeon's needle. 

Moreover, the Bible was not written as one 
book. As late as Chrysostom it was called 



The Evolution of the Book 245 

*'the books." At that time it had not been 
bound in one volume. When Paul wrote his 
letter to the Colossians he wrote one to the 
Laodiceans also. He then directs that the 
Laodicean epistle be read in the church at Co- 
losse, and the Colossian letter be read in La- 
odicea (Col. 4. 16). Evidently he regarded 
one letter as important as the other. Can we 
safely hold that there was any inherent reason 
why one letter should be preserved and the 
other lost? Paul apparently had no expecta- 
tion that one letter would be treasured for 
centuries bound in the same volume with the 
Law and the Prophets, and reverenced by the 
Christian world, while the other would be 
totally unknown save for this casual state- 
ment. There is, to be sure, a so-called "Epistle 
to the Laodiceans." But this document, 
which is found in Latin only, is repudiated by 
Christian scholars with the possible exception 
of Gregory the Great. 

Paul had no conception of the Bible as we 
know it. Most likely he had no thought that 
he was furnishing a contribution to one of the 
sacred books of the world when he penned his 
friendly greetings to his far-away friends, or 
asked Timothy to hurry on to Rome with his 
cloak as winter was at hand, or when he asked 



246 Back to Bethlehem 

a room and a bed of Philemon as he hoped 
soon to pay him a visit. In fact, the writings 
of the disciple of Jesus did not at once take 
rank with the Old Testament Scriptures. The 
early church fathers who quoted from the 
gospels deemed it necessary to supplement 
these quotations by the authority of the earlier 
writings. The New Testament did not at once 
come into its kingdom. The reverence we feel 
for it is not the result of any claim it has 
made, for itself of inerrancy or of inspiration. 
With the exception of a few guarded utter- 
ances it may be said to be remarkably silent 
as to its authority. Men have had more to 
say as to the proper attitude toward the New 
Testament than the New Testament itself. 

As a completed volume we may say that the 
Bible is a human production. There were 
sacred Scriptures long before there was a sa- 
cred Book. The Spirit may have indited the 
Scriptures, but man made the Book. Whether 
the Book is larger or smaller than the Scrip- 
tures is a problem not as yet solved. The 
canon decides our relation toward the so- 
called sacred writings, and the canon is a hu- 
man invention. That which has been rejected 
by this more or less arbitrary standard is 
stripped of authority, that which has been in- 



The Evolution of the Book 247 

dorsed has thus received the officia^i stamp of 
inspiration. And there is not yet an agree- 
ment upon this vital subject. The Council 
of Trent commits the Roman Catholic Church 
to much that is repudiated by Protestantism. 
Such and such sacred books inspired of God, 
according to one authority ; these same books, 
according to another authority, but the prod- 
uct of human reason, unreliable and practically 
useless. 

There is no proof that the canon of the Old 
Testament Scriptures had been settled in the 
time of Christ. In fact, the old manuscripts 
we possess of the Septuagint, the version used 
by Jesus and his disciples, contain much that 
is not acknowledged by Protestant authority 
to-day. Quotations are made in the apostolic 
writings from these discarded books.^ As far 
as we know, it was to these books as well as 
to the more acceptable ones that Jesus referred 
when he said, "Ye search the Scriptures ; . . . 
these are they which testify of me." The 
writings with which Timothy was familiar 
from childhood contained the books of Tobit, 
and Judith, and Susanna and the Dragon, and 
the like. 

Moreover, the Old Testament contains quo- 

* James i. 19 from Ecclus. 5. 11; Rom. 9. 21 from Wisdom 15. 7 



248 Back to Bethlehem 

tations from many books that are not now sup- 
posed to be in existence. It is interesting to 
speculate as to the attitude of the Christian 
world toward these books should they be dis- 
covered — 'The Book of Jasher/' for instance, 
from which the brilliant quotation in reference 
to the standing of the sun upon Gibeon is 
made, or 'The Book of the Wars of the Lord," 
in which was a record of what was done by 
the Lord in the Red Sea and in the brooks 
of Anion (Num. 21. 14). Would the unearth- 
ing of these lost records mean a recasting of 
the canon, and a redraft of the Articles of 
Religion ? 

The New Testament as it stands is the result 
of centuries of discussion and conflict. Chris- 
tian scholars and church councils at last have 
fixed its boundaries. That the Epistles of 
Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, or the 
Apocalypse of Peter is not in the canon is not 
because of any inspired directions or order. 
These with others were circulated in the early 
days, and were regarded with more or less 
of reverence. The Sinaitic manuscript (fourth 
century) contains the Epistle of Barnabas. 
The Alexandrian Bible (fifth century) con- 
tains the Epistle of Clement, and in the table 
of contents refers to it under the head of 



The Evolution of the Book 249 

'H KAINH AIAGHKH.^ Only by common con- 
sent and by the decision of councils have we 
the Bible of our day. Who now has the power 
to say that the book is too large or too small ? 

Thus has the great Book come to us, pre- 
pared at different times and under vastly dif- 
fering circumstances; written by men who 
were strangers to each other, and without col- 
lusion or agreement as to purpose; then sifted 
by the slow process of time and the jealous 
scrutiny of criticism, until that which we have 
remains to us and we hold it as a precious 
gift from God. 

Hence we meet with endless variety. The 
Book is a Joseph's coat of many colors, a 
treasure house in which is stored supplies for 
the world's need. Just what we want we 
may find here. High or low, rich or poor, 
learned or ignorant, all may come and be satis- 
fied. There is history for the man who looks 
backward to the beginnings, and prophecy 
for him who looks forward into the to-morrow. 
There is prose for the sober and practical, and 
loftiest poetry for the imaginative and the 
dream.y. Are we looking for speculative phi- 
losophy? Let us try Ecclesiastes. Are we 
interested in sociology and political economy? 

1 Vincent, History of Textual Criticism. 20. 



250 Back to Bethlehem 

Here it is for us in Leviticus and Judges. Do 
we thrill at the touch of the heroic? Job, 
Esther, the Acts of the Apostles have material 
that will please. The Book runs the whole 
gamut of human need and human longing, 
even as its writers represent every grade of 
life and condition. The king is there writing 
with a golden stylus on the finest imported 
Egyptian papyrus ; the shepherd penning his 
odes under the sky and in the midst of his 
sheep; the government official whose ready 
hand is accustomed to columns of figures and 
reports of trade ; the physician studying the 
cases he must describe and giving us the ben- 
efit of his expert diagnosis ; the fisherman who 
has not learned letters, who writes only because 
the mighty impulse has possessed him, and who 
would be more at home among the nets; the 
scholar trained to his work, skilled in the sub- 
tleties of speech, conversant with the best 
thought of others in the same field, and who 
"as occasion served would quote the choicest 
bits to enforce his own contention." Each 
man has given his best and the best of the 
age in which he lives. It is the gleaning of 
the ages. The sunshine of forty centuries pur- 
pling the vintage on a thousand hills is pre- 
served in this sparkling wine. The great 



The Evolution of the Book 251 

thoughts that ripened in the field of human 
endeavor and travail were in one generation 
gathered and stored v^^ith the thoughts of all 
preceding generations, and together they are 
bound into one sheaf and it stands for the 
richest fruitage of the human soul. Moses 
wrote the best that he knew, and Nehemiah 
indited his largest thoughts, and Paul gives us 
the essence of his age ; each standing on tiptoe 
to get a broader horizon, and each profiting 
by all that had been sai-d before him. 

Thus we are ready to understand that which 
is manifest upon every page of the Book — that 
it is a growth. It gains in breadth and char- 
acter as it rolls down the centuries. Unin- 
spired religions do not improve. There is 
usually a manifest reversion to type. Moham- 
med hiding in the caves of Mecca proclaimed 
a purer faith than did Mohammed the master 
of men. The most ancient name given to 
God by one of the most ancient of faiths, 
Brahmanism, is "Dyaus-pitar," or Heaven- 
Father. This was simple and lofty and spir- 
itual. But in the process of years this personal 
God became impersonal. Monotheism became 
materialism and pantheism. A hymn in the 
Egyptian ''Book of the Dead," the oldest 
known literature in the world, speaks of God 



252 Back to Bethlehem 

as the Self-existent One. The later religion 
of the Egyptian as known by the Greeks was 
gross and corrupt. 

This recognized and universal law of de- 
terioration has given the data by which many 
scholars claim to arrange the chronology of 
the Pentateuch. The laws of Israel are class- 
ified under four heads: i. The Ten Words; 
2. The Book of the Covenant ; 3. The Deuter- 
onomic Code ; 4. The Levitical Codes. The 
Ten Words deal with that only which is funda- 
mental. The Book of the Covenant is but an 
application of the Ten Words with its em- 
phasis upon the one God and with its tacit 
indorsement of multiplied places of worship. 
The Deuteronomic Code, however, preserving 
the emphasis upon the unity of God, declares 
for one sanctuary, but without any special ref- 
erence to the ritual. Then comes the Levitical 
Code, whose chief topic is the ritual. Hence 
it is claimed there is revealed a very marked 
deterioration. The Decalogue goes back to 
Moses. The Book of the Covenant may have 
been in existence 1000 B. C. The Deuteron- 
omic Code was prepared in the days of Josiah ; 
while Ezra and his associates are responsible 
for the Levitical Code. Let us accept this 
hypothetically ; then the fact that this is not 



The Evolution of the Book 253 

the trend of the entire series of revelations is 
strong presumptive proof that something has 
been at work besides the natural tendency to 
degeneration. We have received something 
better than the Levitical Code. The reversion 
to type, if such there be, has been checked. 
The Bible that lies on our table is a larger 
book than the Bible of the Temple and of 
Saint Paul. Not merely in size; not princi- 
pally in size. Its light is clearer, its judgment 
is cleaner, its morals are purer. God did not 
say to the earlier writers what he said to those 
who came later. He did not teach the whole 
law in one lesson. It was daydawn before it 
was noon. 

And so we find conditions in the older books 
that startle us and set us to wondering and 
explaining — actions that are contrary to our 
standards of right, and precepts that are out- 
lawed by later revelations. The same voice 
that said to Israel, "Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor," said also, speaking of Ammon and Moab, 
''Because they met you not with bread and 
water in the way when ye came out of 'Egypt, 
and because they hired against thee Balaam 
to curse thee, . . . thou shalt not seek their 
peace nor their prosperity all thy days for- 
ever." And everybody knows what this Ian- 



254 Back to Bethlehem 

guage means when addressed to a nation of 
warriors already in the field. This same voice 
said later that this teaching was now out of 
date and the world was ready for another and 
a better code. ''An eye for an eye, a tooth for 
a tooth," might do for Israel, crude, ignorant, 
debased; but such a creed received its death- 
blow on a later page of the same book; and 
this is the code of the savage only to-day. 
"The word spoken by angels was steadfast," 
let us believe, but it was inferior in character 
and authority to the "great salvation which at 
the first began to be spoken by the Lord and 
was confirmed with us by them that heard him." 
Deborah the prophetess illustrates the age 
in which she lives. When Jael, the wife of 
Heber the Kenite, violates all the sacredness 
of hospitality and all the traditions of her sex 
by murdering the weary, unsuspecting Sisera, 
Deborah sings the exultant song: 

**Blessed above women shall Jael be, 
The wife of Heber the Kenite. 
Blessed shall she be above women in the tent. 
He asked water, she gave him milk; 
She handed him cream in a dish of nobles. 
She put her hand to the nail. 
And her right hand to the workmen's hammer; 
And hammered Sisera, broke his head. 
And dashed in pieces and pierced his temples." 



The Evolution of the Book 255 

The vindictive prophetess even gloats over the 
desolation that has come to the far-away home 
of her enemy: 

"Through the window she looked forth and cried, 
The mother of Sisera through the lattice work; 
'Why is his chariot so long in coming? 
Why tarry the steps of his team ?' " 

This act of Jael was the act of a savage squaw, 
and the exultation of Deborah was of no 
higher grade than the scalp dance of a vic- 
torious tribe decked with the trophies of a 
treacherous and heartless warfare. Such 
things would not be tolerated in these days 
because the later chapters of the same book 
have taught a nobler creed. The campaigns 
of Joshua, the imprecatory Psalms, the sacri- 
fice of Jephthah, all these the world has out- 
grown and repudiated because the world has 
been taught by a riper revelation. Human lives 
are no longer to be shaped by these low stand- 
ards and bloody precepts. This was significant- 
ly taught by Jesus. James and John, the sons 
of thunder, had studied the ancient methods ; 
so when the villagers of Samaria refuse them 
hospitality they remembered the days of Eli- 
jah and asked if they too should call down 
fire from heaven. Then in a single sentence 



256 Back to Bethlehem 

was shown the purpose of God : "Ye know not 
what manner of spirit ye are of. The Son 
of man is not come to destroy men's Hves, but 
to save them." Not that there was rebuke to 
EHjah and his school. The spirit of this stern 
old reformer was ahead of his own age, and 
deserves praise only. It was rather a revela- 
tion of the fact that evolution had been at 
work, that "new occasions teach new duties, 
time makes ancient good uncouth." This new 
creed of the Master was vastly in advance of 
his own times, and the crucifixion was the 
result. It would have been entirely out of 
place and utterly helpless in the days of Elijah. 
Thq rocks must be blasted before the temple 
is built, and this can be done by force only. 
The ore must be melted before the vessels of 
honor may be fashioned, and this is the work 
of fire. 

Perhaps the simplest way to illustrate the 
growth of revelation would be by a summary 
of life as it is operated upon by divine influ- 
ences. Take, for instance, the life of Jacob. 
He is sufficiently crude and primitive at the 
outset, and his case makes an interesting study. 
There are three periods in his life as affected 
by the supernatural: First, when asleep in his 
enforced exile from home, in a dream the lad- 



The Evolution of the Book 257 

der appears, the angels descending and ascend- 
ing, and he calls the place Beth-el, or "the 
House of God." Again, when returning from 
Haran after his separation from Laban the 
angels of God meet him, and he calls the place 
of meeting Mahanaim, or "the Hosts of 
God." And, finally, when he wrestles all night 
with his mysterious visitor, he calls the 
place Peniel, or "the Face of God." Here is 
a regular evolution. At first only a dream in 
the slumbers of the night, and the angels 
moved on their errands regardless of his pres- 
ence. It was only the House of God, general, 
indefinite, open to the world. In the second 
instance he saw the messengers of God when 
he was wide-awake. They met him on his 
journey. They came at a time of great un- 
certainty and suspense. The defrauded Laban 
had been placated, but what guarantee was 
there of safety from the defrauded Esau. 
The epiphany of the angelic hosts seemed to 
relate to this, seemed to hold somewhere and 
somehow a solution of this problem. But still 
it was ambiguous. It was without the personal 
touch. As in the earlier appearance, it was by 
inference only that he could connect the vision 
with his own need; the inference now, how- 
ever, was vastly stronger and clearer. The 



25B Back to Bethlehem 

third instance is the dimax. Here was no 
dream, and no casual meaning. There could 
be no question as to the import of this mani- 
festation. It is now Peniel, the Face of God. 
It is while broadly awake and with every 
faculty alert. Moreover, now the supernatural 
factor is not oblivious and self-centered as in 
the first interview ; not remote and ambiguous 
as in the second. The purpose of God has 
been striding forward^ and in his giant grip 
does the Angel hold the Man until the day- 
break softens the peaks of Gilead and the wak- 
ing camp on the other side of Jabbok begins 
to shiver in the mists of the morning. 

Take another illustration, and one that 
sweeps a wider segment and touches more 
closely the common heart. It is well known 
that the Old Testament does not commit itself 
on the subject of immortality and the future 
life. Israel Vv^as content with promises of 
material good. Long life, posterity as the 
sands of the sea, the fruit of the vine and the 
product of the olive press — this was the range 
of their eschatological dreams. There are ref- 
erences and allusions more or less definite. 
We find such expressions as, "He was gathered 
to his fathers," or "to his people." We are told 
that the "body must return to the earth from 



The Evolution of the Book 259 

whence it was taken, but the spirit to God 
who gave it," a text which may easily be made 
to do service in defense of the doctrine of ab- 
sorption. The doctrine of immortahty as we 
have it to-day may be said to have grown with 
the growth of the Book. Let us look at this 
development. 

In the earliest days Enoch passes away. It 
is all obscure, and the sacred writer does not 
attempt to remove the obscurity. Perhaps he 
is unable to remove it. Perhaps he writes all 
he knows. The patriarch in question ''was," 
and then he "was not," and the only plausible 
explanation is that "God took him." It seems 
to be an exception to the general rule. Some- 
thing mysterious has occurred. Case after 
case had been cited. Lives had been lived, 
children had been begotten, and then in every 
instance the matter closed by the short, swift 
sentence, "and he died." From Adam to Noah 
it had been easy to write the biography. There 
was no eccentricity ; there was no challenge. 
The world walked in a beaten track, and the 
work of the historian was simple. But with 
Enoch came the first divergence. He could 
not be classified. He did not die as others had 
died, and so is noted the great exception, and 
in bewilderment the historian writes, "He was 



26o Back to Bethlehem 

not, for God took him." Thus was spoken the 
first parable, and it is the beginning of the 
story of the triumph of Hfe over death. The 
first faint streaks of the dawn that shall some 
day flood the cemeteries of the world. 

Somewhat later and the second object lesson 
is given. Moses is to be taken away. He is 
to die. At any rate, it is supposed that he is 
to die, but again there is mystery. No eye is 
to look upon him as he passes away, and no 
human being is to know where the body lies. 
The people know only when the event is to 
occur, and they are permitted to watch the 
venerable figure move up the mountain side 
and disappear down the slope that looks toward 
Canaan. The great solution has moved a step 
nearer. Then comes the case of Elijah. He 
too is taken hence. Now indeed the agency 
of his translation is seen and the phenomenon 
noted, because at last one man has been found 
ready to receive the mighty revelation. It does 
not yet belong to the world. The shadows are 
still somber and chill in the valleys; but there 
are gleams on the high places, and one man is 
able to catch the flash of the heavenly char- 
iots because he of all the race has climbed 
to these high places. Elijah's translation was 
a stage in the evolution of revealed truth, and 



The Evolution of the Book 261 

Elisha's power of vision was a stage in the 
evolution of the race. Some such ascension 
and translation occurred in each of the other 
cases, perhaps, but there was no one to see. 
The world was not trained to see ; it was not 
ready and able to see. 

The climax is reached when the new dispen- 
sation was inaugurated. The God-Man came 
to bring immortality to light. It was his plan 
to give the finished lesson to the now prepared 
race. He would lift the curtain and let the 
inner glory flash out upon the world. Man 
now was able to witness the whole process. 
Calmly and deliberately the great Demon- 
strator submitted to death and was buried. 
Care was taken that the work be thorough, 
and testimony to the decease was filed. There 
must be no flaw in the experiment. Then on 
Easter morning came the demonstration. 
Amid the shaking of the earthquake an angel 
appeared and rolled away the stone from the 
door of the sepulcher, and, behold, the sepul- 
cher was empty. And the risen Christ walked 
among men and was seen of many. The great 
revelation was complete. It had taken 
thirty centuries for its unfolding. Enoch and 
Moses and Elijah and Christ: this was the 
story in chapters ; this was the dynasty of de- 



262 Back to Bethlehem 

velopment, until the zenith is reached and 
the scholar of Tarsus is ready to write in 
large, full characters, "For we know that if 
our earthly house of this tabernacle were dis- 
solved we have a building of God, an house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
These are only sidelights and suggest the 
general trend. The Book itself is a history 
of redemption, and of the Redeemer. In Gen- 
esis the curse is pronounced, in the Revela- 
tion we are told of a time or a state in which 
"there shall be no more curse." In Genesis the 
race is driven from the tree of life, and a flam- 
ing sword guards the gateway. In the Reve- 
lation we are told that the leaves of this tree 
are for the healing of the nations. In Genesis 
the serpent-symbol of evil makes his appearance 
and his track is seen down through the book. 
In the Revelation this old serpent is cast into 
the lake of fire and humanity is forever freed 
from his machinations. The garden of the 
first book, suggestive of primitive days and 
simple lives, is transformed into the city of 
the last book, the exponent of modern condi- 
tions, and that which has been prepared for 
one family is succeeded by that which shall 
be the home of redeemed and enlightened 
nations. 



The Evolution of the Book 263 

What a marvelous evolution it is, and how 
divinely it is inspired and managed, while 
through it one supreme, majestic figure 
moves, the reason for it all, the explanation 
of it all, the glory of it all ! Coming into view 
on its very first pages ; growing in distinctness 
and increasing in prominence until he steps 
into the clear light of the newest dispensation, 
and, lo ! "the Word was made fleshy and dwelt 
among us, and we beheld his glory as of the 
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth." 



XII 
EPILOGUE 



XII 

Epilogtie 

We no longer fear the argument of the athe- 
ist nor the sneers of the scoffer. No one tries 
to demonstrate that Jesus is a myth, or that 
Christianity is a cunningly devised fable. 
Skepticism of that type is as old-fashioned and 
as amusing as the lumbering stage coach or 
the clumsy firelocks of the fathers. There is, 
however, a spirit of materialism abroad in the 
land. Our books, our newspapers, our pulpits 
are filled with figures and progress and scien- 
tific discoveries. This is emphatically the Zeit- 
geist, and is in line of succession from the past. 
From the days of prehistoric man through all 
the bloody centuries to Constantine physical 
force was paramount. The world was a cage 
of wild beasts. The spoil was to the strongest. 
There was no pity and there was no help. Na- 
tion rushed against nation in the howling 
maelstrom of war. What a great rude, clumsy, 
murderous animal was man, inventing new 
deaths for his fellow man and marking new 
boundary lines on the map with blood. 



26B Back to Bethlehem 

Then came Constantine, whose arm was 
strong, it is true, but whose cunning was mas- 
terful. He would teach the race a new game, 
and create new reasons for men to hate each 
other. So he played upon human passions, he 
appealed to latent superstition, he united 
church and state and pledged the assistance of 
an almighty hand in their cruelties and slaugh- 
ter. Ecclesiasticism ruled from Constantine to 
Galileo, and its record is the slime track of the 
snail across the arid plains of the Middle 
Ages. The church listened at every keyhole, 
sat in the university chairs, and forbade the 
earth to move because it did not believe in 
movement or progress of any kind. But the 
telescope came, and the printing press, and 
the railroads, and the power of the dead hand 
was broken and there obtained a new align- 
ment of ideas and forces. And what now? 
What but a pitiful materialism that exalts the 
stuff, glorifies the ponderable, and that tends 
to strangle the noblest instincts of the soul. 
We measure our evolution as a people, our 
enlargement as individuals, in terms of the in- 
voice book or the market place. There are so 
many millions of population this year against 
so many last year, so many battleships in the 
navy as compared with the navy of Germany 



Epilogue 269 

or of Japan, hence we are fulfilling our na- 
tional destiny. Our bank account is plus in- 
stead of minus, at any rate let us say that it is 
hypothetically, hence our life has been a suc- 
cess. We have canal locks that could lift the 
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse to the top of a 
mountain. We have grown impatient of the 
measureless waste at Niagara, and now the 
world's wonder is beginning to turn the 
world's wheels and to grind flour for the 
world's bread. We have calculated in foot- 
pounds the energy expended in driving the 
earth along its swift path among the stars, and 
no doubt would like to hitch the whole machin- 
ery to our dynamos and advertise "power to 
let." 

This trend is seen in our educational meth- 
ods. Where once the boys and girls studied 
with persistent emphasis classic poetry and an- 
cient love songs they now study the use of 
tools and the analysis of the soil. Once the 
schools dealt in ideas, now they concern them- 
selves with gases and minerals. Once the 
children learned to parse sonorous sentences 
from Milton, or to paraphrase the stately pe- 
riods of Addison, or to translate the war songs 
of Homer; now all this divides the time with 
the fermenting process in baking a loaf of 



270 Back to Bethlehem 

bread, or the amount of energy in a pound of 
anthracite coal. What did our fathers know 
about geology? What did they care? The 
earth was a derelict world and would soon be 
destroyed; why study so ephemeral an object? 
Astronomy is but a few years out of the nur- 
sery. Martin Luther said of Copernicus, "This 
fool wishes to reverse the entire science of 
astronomy." Sir Isaac Newton's theory of 
gravitation was held to "dethrone Providence." 
Charles Darwin when a boy was publicly re- 
buked by the head master at Shrewsbury for 
wasting his time on such a useless subject as 
chemistry. His nickname in the school was 
"Gas," and in the vigorous though not very 
elegant phraseology of the playground the de- 
spised science of chemistry was known as 
"stinks." Now these sciences are familiar to 
the children; they are taught in the cross- 
road schoolhouse ; they have taken front rank 
in the college curriculum. 

Our modern science is looking for facts, 
and facts are popular nowadays. It does not 
care where they are to be found, nor concern 
itself with the effects of the discovery. It 
wants facts. It has no time for sentiment ; it 
is impatient of preaching; it has no taste for 
beauty. It overturns with ruthless hand our 



Epilogue 271 

nursery ideas as to the beginnings of things, 
and pushing its investigations back it finds, or 
it professes to find, or it is entirely willing to 
find, the origin of the human race in the loco- 
motive larva of a compound ascidian, disport- 
ing itself in the slimy ooze of the prehistoric 
sea ; one of whose offspring set out like Abram 
from Ur with its face toward the future and 
the incipient instincts and aspirations of hu- 
manity beating in its sluggish pulses. It traces 
the teeming universe back to an original star 
dust drifting through uncharted space. It 
has no place for what it cannot see ; it does not 
know spirit; it does not need God. This is 
Physical Science, a lusty Titan called from the 
vasty deep and led out into the light during the 
last century. When reverent and modest it 
becomes another Columbus leading to new and 
splendid worlds; when irreverent and reck- 
less it is Phaethon driving the chariot of the 
sun with untried hands and bringing darkness 
and disaster. 

This influence is seen in our ideas of sanita- 
tion. There was a time when disease was sup- 
posed to be caused by evil spirits ; when phys- 
ical disorders were to be cured by prayer, or 
the touch of the king, or contact with the 
relics of a saint. The bones of Saini Rosalie 



2/2 Back to Bethlehem 

at Palermo healed scores of devotees. A med- 
dling scientist discovered that they were the 
bones of a goat ; they went right on, however, 
^with undiminished healing power. An exor- 
cism in Latin was the best thing tO' stop an 
epidemic, and a prayer meeting would break up 
a fever. We are learning better things nowa- 
days. The Scotch clergymen who petitioned 
Lord Palmerston to appoint a day of fasting 
and prayer on account of the cholera were told 
to go home and clean their streets. "God give 
you better health — and more sense," said Wil- 
liam of Orange to the patient who pleaded 
for the king's touch. We are preaching the 
gospel of good drainage. We call the evil 
spirits microbes, and instead of vaticination 
after mediaeval precedent our modern prophets 
are given to vaccination. This is a move in 
the right direction, and the world is cleaner 
and healthier therefor. Yet there is always 
danger that the pendulum, once aswing, will 
swing too far. There is a soul, though the 
surgeons do not find it with their knives and 
their microscopes, and everything of this world 
and of the next depends upon how we regard 
and cultivate that soul. There are evil spirits, 
though that which our fathers called posses- 
sion may sometimes have been hysteria. We 



Epilogue 273 

are pushing back the Hmits of the supernatu- 
ral; we are invading its territory, or that 
which once seemed to be its territory. We are 
touching with our lancets the very sources of 
life, but let us remember that the secrets are 
not all told yet. The atom of life which the 
biologist is watching on the stage of his micro- 
scope contains that within its tiny cells which 
links it with eternity, which baffles research, 
which sits in quiet scorn waiting for him to 
announce what it is, and whence it comes, and 
whither it moves in the orbit of its occult 
existence. 

Even our philanthropies are caught in the 
swing of this tide. Never has there been such 
marked solicitude in reference to the physical. 
The latest charge against intemperance is that 
it destroys muscle and disintegrates brain 
tissue. The violent upheaval against tenement 
houses is based upon material issues. Disease 
comes through these insanitary conditions, and 
the next generation will be handicapped and 
the stamina of the race weakened. And so we 
are told how many families have been visited, 
how many sick children cared for, how many 
city-smitten wretches sent into the country on 
fresh-air tickets. This is a hopeful sign. 
These bodies are the temple of the Holy 



274 Back to Bethlehem 

Ghost. The Word was made flesh and dwelt 
among us. The best way so often to minister 
to a mind diseased is to begin with the dis- 
eased body. But again I say when once we 
are started in any given direction it is so hard 
to stop, or even to slow down. Monomania 
is unbalanced mental inertia. Error lies so 
hard upon the territory of truth that it is never 
more than a few days' journey off in any direc- 
tion we may be facing. 

Thus we are beginning to settle the pro- 
foundest questions of ethics with physical 
counters. Judas Iscariot, we are told, was 
imperfectly nourished when a child, hence his 
treason when he grew to man's estate. Nero 
had a clot of blood pressing upon his brain. 
The murderer of President McKinley was but 
obeying the impulses of some savage ancestor 
when he plunged the nation into grief. Hered- 
ity and environment, we have made these our 
scapegoats, and on them have laid the sins of 
this generation. Conscience is the half-forgot- 
ten voice of some one who spoke to us in the 
cradle. Morality is the harmonious adjust- 
ment of the brain molecules. Religion is an 
instinct begotten of the ghost stories told about 
the forest fires by our wandering semi-simian 
ancestors. 



Epilogue 275 

*'Son of man, can these dry bones live ? Can 
this glorious age be rescued from the blight 
of spiritual paralysis? How shall we bring 
new life to these dry bones, and clothe them 
anew with supple muscles and with tingling 
nerves ? Only by a recrudescence of the super- 
natural; by a new vision of the divine imma- 
nence ; by a renewed uncovering of the hiding 
place of power. We have been misplacing 
the emphasis on the startling words, "With 
God all things are possible" — so misplacing it, 
indeed, that a great truth is liable to become 
a great falsehood. There are impossibilities 
to God. He cannot make our life; he cannot 
mar it. This text does not imply central- 
ization, but cooperation. God alone can- 
not do the impossible, neither can we; but 
you and I with God and the impossible 
ceases to be. 

There is no success without this alliance. 
The musician may seek to ignore God. He 
may say, "I am looking for new chords and 
richer combinations, and God has nothing to 
do with it." And so he tries over and over 
the changing harmonies until by and by he 
cries out, "I have it, I have it ! It is something 
new ; it will make me famous ; the world has 
never heard the like before." But it is one of 



2y6 Back to Bethlehem 

God's old chords, harmonized from the foun- 
dation of time, and sung by the morning stars 
on the daydawn of history. And it is when a 
Haydn can voice the crash of storm or the roll 
of thunder in his ''Creation," or a Beethoven 
can reproduce the ripple of waves and the 
rustle of leaves in his "Moonlight Sonata" — 
God's storms and God's waves — it is then that 
the people are thrilled. The artist succeeds 
only as he works with God. He may shut him- 
self up in his studio, and mix his paints and 
blunder along with his petty conceptions, and 
nobody cares; but when a Moran goes to the 
Yellowstone and catches the glory of the Falls 
and the Canon ; when a Turner puts the blaz- 
ing morning sky in his Ulysses and Polyphe- 
mus, or a group of pines, a running stream, 
and a distant glimpse of the sea, in his "Cross- 
ing the Brook" — it is then, when God steps 
upon the canvas, that men take off their hats 
and stand in awe. 

It is the coming of the Christ into human 
life, into daily life, into professional life, that 
is to mean sanity and success. Just as Paul of 
Tarsus met the artistic materialism of Athens 
by preaching Jesus and the resurrection ; just 
as Martin Luther met the ecclesiastical mate- 
rialism of the dark ages by thundering the 



Epilogue ^^jy 

old doctrines of repentance toward God and 
faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ; just as 
John Wesley, and Rowland Hill, and John 
Fletcher met the deistic materialism of the 
eighteenth century by a return to first princi- 
ples and a reaffirmation of the supreme facts 
of the spiritual, as illustrated in the life, death, 
and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and the 
Spirit witness of spiritual life in the believer's 
heart. 

We are more than body. There is more than 
the visible. The world is more than laws. 
There was something before yesterday; there 
will be something after to-morrow. The dear 
dead forms that lie so still and tranquil in the 
casket will not lie mute and unresponsive for- 
ever. They are not "drowned in the depths 
of a meaningless past." They will live again, 
and they will smile again, when we touch their 
hands on the eternal hills. Let us be reverent, 
let us be humble, let us be exultant. There is 
reason for our faith; there is reason in our 
faith. We are not machines, cash registers, 
beasts of burden. In the supreme moment 
when man became a living soul he was differ- 
entiated from the tribes that move upon the 
earth's surface or swim in its seas. His fore- 
head in that moment was lifted to the divine 



278 Back to Bethlehem 

level, his feet were turned into the King's high- 
way that leads through the eternities. 

Two boats are out yonder fishing side by 
side. Presently the anchors are lifted and they 
start for home. One fisherman puts out his 
oars and pulls sturdily toward the shore. The 
other seems to drift ; he ships no oars ; he 
makes no haste. He is lifting into the air a 
broad white piece of canvas. It is not orna- 
mental, it affords no screen from the sun, it is 
apparently useless. But presently it is fixed 
in its place; then it grows rigid, there is a 
straining of stays, a swaying of spars, and now 
away flies the boat, flinging the white spray 
from her prow and hastening to the land. The 
first boat is a fish, the second boat is a bird. 
One gets its power from below, the other from 
above. One lives in the world of the visible, 
the slow, the commonplace; the other has 
reached out into the invisible, has taken hold 
of the unseen. What opportunities there are 
above us ! What a world of majesty and 
breadth is there ! We do not see it, we can- 
not understand it, but we have endowments 
and affinities which, like the spread sail of the 
boatman, adjust themselves to this glorious 
spiritual realm and bear us as on wings. Let 
us get up our sails. The winds are blowing 



Epilogue 279 

over land and sea. They are blowing seaward. 
All down the horizon great ships are sailing. 
Mighty spiritual fleets are out there, sailing, 
sailing, over an ocean wide as eternity and 
sunlit with the gracious smile of God. *'The 
glorious company of the apostles, the goodly 
fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of 
martyrs," all these have entered into commun- 
ion with the invisible, have set their affections 
upon the spiritual, have touched the pulse of 
the Infinite. 

"I came that they may have life, and that 
they may have abundance," is the latest word. 
It is the newest and the surest promise of hope 
for to-day. "And the stretching out of his 
wings shall fill the breadth of the land, O 
Immanuel." 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A 

Abraham Page 91 

Adam 55 

Adamite, Daughters of. 60 

.^schylus 182 

Ages of the world 219 

Agnosticism 83 

Alexandrian manuscript 248 

Ambrose 213 

Amherst 193 

Anglo-Saxon 62 

Apatheia 20 

Apostolic times 226 

Aquinas, Thomas 79 

Arbitration, Court of. . . 112 

Archangel, Guido Reni's 186 

Arminius, James 143 

Artists and Christ 214 

Aryan 62 

Astronomy. . .127, 209, 220 

Athenians 56 

Atonement retroactive . 64 



B 

Baptism 86, 139 

Baptist, John the 81 

Barbarians 95 

Bartholomew, Saint 131 

Beth-el 257 

Bible 160, 239 

Biography 93 

"Book of Dead" 251 

Brewster, Sir David.. . , 65 

Brooks, Phillips 34 

Brotherhood of man. . . 56 



Browning. . .Page 130,211 

Buddha 19, 88 

Butler's Analogy 162 

Byron 60 



c 

Cain 59 

Caliban 130 

Calvinism 141 

Canon, Old Testament.. 247 
Canterbury, Archbishop 

of 73 

Capital and labor 231 

Capuchins, Church of. . 186 

Carboniferous Era 188 

Cathedrals 44 

Cave men 60 

Charlemagne 93, 219 

Charles V 140 

Chemistry 270 

Chemosh 136 

Chrysostom 79 

Church, Institutional.. 44 

Classification 73 

Clement 248 

Coleridge 84 

Colossians 245 

Columbus 39 

Commerce 119 

Communism 230 

Confucius 88 

Constantine 268 

Covenant, Book of. 197, 252 

Creeds, Necessary 203 

Criticism 80 



284 



Index 



Cromwell Page 219 

Cross 85, 179, 188, 192 

Crusaders 228 



D 

Damascus, Great Mosque 

of 157 

Dante 139 

Darwin, Charles. 14, 72, 270 

Deborah 254 

Declaration of Independ- 
ence 184 

Design, Argument from 163 

Dispensations, The 220 

Disraeli 210 

Divorce 233 

Doctrines 200 

Drummond. 14, 189 

E 

Edom 33 

Education 269 

Egyptians 56, 241 

Election 141 

Elijah 256, 260 

Emancipation Procla- 
mation 116 

Enoch 259 

Environment 45 

Ephraim, Son of 184 

Epictetus 205 

Epicurus 95 

Esarhaddon. . , 130 

Ethics 274 

Ethnology 58 

Evangelist's picture of 

Christ 214 

Evolution . 14 

Ezekiel 224 

F 

Family, The 233 

Fiske, John 190 



Flood Page 59 

Froebel 142 

Fuegians 72 

G 

Gabriel 240 

Gardiner, Allen 72 

Genesis 58, 60, 209, 262 

Geology 209, 270 

George, Saint 187 

German emperor 122 

Gideon 224 

Gods, Local 41 

Gracchi and Moses. ... 213 

Greeks 177 



H 

Hamilton, Alexander.. 118 

Harnack 80 

Hawthorne 13, 186 

Hegel 12 

Heredity 45 

Hexateuch 241 

History . 114 

Hobbes 26 

Homer 178 

Honoratus 39 

Hosea 199 

Hospital, Charity 92 

Howe, Julia Ward 123 

Hughes, Hugh Price. . . 166 

Humane, Survival of the 193 

Humanity, Gospel of. . . 48 

Hvixley 22 



I 

Immortality in Old Tes- 
tament , 258 

Incas, The 105 

Indians and smallpox... 193 

Industrialism 228 

Intellect, Selfish 25 

Isaiah 33, 183 



Index 



285 



Iscariot, Judas.. ..Page 274 
Israel 57, 136 

J 

Jacob 130, 256 
apanese creation 56 
ehovah 223 
aphtha 136 

Jethro's daughters 206 

Joshua 128, 255 

Judges 241 

K 

Kant 68 

Kennicott 80 

Khan, Grand 36 

Khayyan, Omar 85, 157 

Kidd, Benjamin 189 

Kingdom of God. . .154, 

156, 232 

Kipling, Rudyard 115 

Knights of the Cross. . . 140 
Koornhert 143 

L 

Lanier, Sidney 156, 208 

Laodicea, Epistle to... 245 

Leibnitz 80 

Lenormant 58 

Lessing 80 

Life, Value of 89 

Lincoln 50 

Linnaeus 73 

Logos 85 

Lowell, James R 182 

Luther, Martin 219, 276 

M 

Mahanaim 257 

Mandeville, Sir John. . . 161 

Marcus Aurelius 205 

Markham, Edwin 229 



Mars' Hill Page 57 

Materialism 210, 267 

Mazdean 37 

Menes 56 

Mexico, Princes of 131 

Midgard serpent... .183, 207 

Milton 51 

Miriam, Hawthorne's. . 186 

Missionaries. 38 

Mohammed 240, 251 

Moses. . . . 130, 197, 206, 

208, 211, 223, 240, 260 

Mount, Sermon on 204 

Muller, Max 37 

Mythology 69 

N 

Napoleon 193 

Nature 168, 171, 188 

Nero 274 

Nile 136 

Nirvana 19 

Normans 62 

o 

Odin 134 

Opportunism 231 

Oracle, Delphian 183 

Osiris 94 

P 

Palmerston, Lord 272 

Patriotism 102 

Pantheon 135 

Paul of Tarsus 57, 

226, 245, 276 

Peace Congress. . . . 108, 235 

Peniel 257 

Pentecost 154 

Pestalozzi 142 

Peter and Ananias 230 

Philanthropy. . . . 230, 273 

Philip and Greeks 177 



286 



Index 



Philip.Commodore Page 194 

Philo 85 

Plagues, Egyptian 136 

Pliny's classification. . . 73 

Poe's Raven 26 

Pompeii 185 

Pope, Alexander 192 

Prodigal Son. . .50, 147, 203 

Prometheus 181 

Property 120, 228 

Puritan 79 

R 

Raleigh, Sir Walter. ... 40 

Religion 68, 190 

Republics 118 

Resurrection of Christ.. 261 

Revolution, War of the. 115 

Rossetti 129 

Rousseau, Contrat So- 
cial 142 

Russell, Lord iii 

S 

Salisbury, Lord 121 

Samiasa 60 

Samuel 131 

Sanitation, Modern.... 271 

Science 24, 92, 270 

Sepoy rebellion no 

Servant of Jehovah. ... 183 

Shakespeare 50, 118 

Sienkiewicz 140 

Sierra, Leone 71 

Sinai 200 

Sinaitic manuscript. .. . 248 

Sistine Chapel 144 

Socialism 234 

Soul, Growth of . . . 153, 

169, 172 

Sparta 119 

Spencer, Herbert 104 

Spinoza 80 

Spiritual life 277 

Supper. The Great 42 



T 

Taft, William H .. Page 104 

Tennyson 18, 106 

Theological seminaries.. 202 
Theology, Opposition to 201 

Thor ._ 86, 134 

Thug, Indian 67 

Tobit, Book of 247 

Trent, Council of. . . 140, 247 

Troy 178 

Turanian 62 

u 

Universe 127, 128 

V 

Valhalla 134 

Valjean, Jean 66 

Van Dyke, Henry 228 

Vedas 18 

Venezuela 121 

Vertebrata 74 

Vespasian 226 



Wallace, Alfred Russell. 190 
Washington, George, at 

Yorktown 194 

Wesley, John 144, 277 

Westward Ho 159 

Whittier, "Eternal 

Goodness" 132 

Wolseley, Lord 105 

X 

Xavier, Francis 40 

Z 
Zion Redeemed 183 



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